Painting Roses
by Born-Of-Elven-Blood
Summary: Jane meets the man of her dreams. Literally. Now she just has to figure out how one lives happily ever after when the handsome prince is already dead. [Loki/Jane]
1. Prologue: Two Princes

**Disclaimer**: I don't own any of these characters or the original plot of the MCU. This story, such as it is, is not for sale or profit.

**AN**: The concept for this story is the shameless product of a forty-eight hour Disney movie binge, with a sprinkling of inspiration from Lewis Carroll, Jane Austen, and Star Trek thrown in for spice. This is basically a work of pure self-satisfaction – in other words, I'm about to embarrass myself irrevocably by displaying the innate goofiness of my imagination. Comments and constructive criticism are always welcome, but don't bother flaming, I am already well aware of what you are probably thinking.

Fair warning: there _will_ be singing.

This story takes place after the events of Thor II: The Dark World, and is non-compliant with anything after that.

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* * *

_**Prologue **_

_Two Princes_

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* * *

"_One, two, princes kneel before you  
That's what I said now,  
Princes; princes who adore you  
Just go ahead now...  
Marry him? Or marry me?  
I'm the one who loves you, baby, can't you see?  
I ain't got no future or family tree,  
But I know what a princely lover ought to be…"_

_\- Spin Doctors_

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* * *

"This is not a game for me, Jane!" Thor said, gesturing expansively at the space between his position and where Jane stood on the opposite side of the room. His tone was ominous with accusation.

"It isn't a game for me either!" Jane insisted, trying valiantly to hold back tears. This was not going well. Why did he insist on pushing her?

_He's the handsome prince, _she thought derisively at herself,_ and I'm the peasant girl he wants to sweep off her feet and carried off into the sunset. That isn't supposed to happen outside of fairytales, but here it is. Happily ever after! What is the matter with me?_

Now was not the time to sit down and tally up that list. They'd be here all night.

"I turned my back on my home and gave up my throne to come here!" Thor raged on, ignoring her troubled silence. He turned away and ran his fingers through his golden locks, distressed. "To be with you!"

Jane sucked in a slow breath, gripping her temper with both hands, but she could feel herself bristling. Well, at least the problems were not _all_ hers.

"So you keep reminding me," she replied, gritting her teeth slightly as that now-familiar reminder grated at her with guilt that riled an old, hurtful anger. She somehow resisted reminding him that she had wasted two years of her comparatively very short life waiting for him. They had already been down that road, and while slapping him again might feel really good at the moment, she somehow doubted it would solve anything. "I told you before, this just… isn't the right time… I have to… think…"

"What is there to think about, Jane?" Thor demanded, whirling around to pin her with a glare. Even from across the room, and despite knowing he would never harm her, his anger and sheer physical presence were enough to make her shrink with a thrill of fear. "Have we not had enough time for thinking while we were apart? And it isn't as though this is the first time we have spoken of this. There has been time _enough_. What are you _waiting_ for?"

"Yeah, time. Lots of time," Jane muttered, wincing internally. She just couldn't help it, could she? It always came out when they fought, her resentment over his long absence.

Thor narrowed his eyes, but didn't say anything. What could he say, after all? He could have found a way to come to her sooner… Jane sighed.

"I'm sorry. I'm not… it's just… with work… and you always taking off with SHIELD… and you stay away for days, even weeks at a time…" _Even years at a time… don't say it. Resist. _"I'm just trying to concentrate on my research right now and…"

She trailed off as she saw Thor shaking his head. He looked pained and disgusted. He crossed to her and clasped her shoulders gently in his hands.

"It is always the same excuses, be it for small matters or for…" he sighed, as though deeply disappointed in her, "… or for a proposal of marriage," he said, the accusation softened by the quiet, hurt tone of his voice as he crossed to her. Despite his gentle touch, his hands were a heavy weight on her shoulders. "I want to be with you, Jane. I want to _marry _you. Isn't that what you want?"

"I…" She hesitated, the words stuck in her throat. The way his face fell at her silence made the threatening tears spill over, tracing twin trails down her cheeks. She forced the words past her lips, unable to bear the sight of his pain. "Of _course_ that's what I want," she said, her voice choked, lying through her teeth. "It just… isn't the right time…"

Thor dropped her shoulders as though he'd been burned, and stalked away, still shaking his head.

"I don't understand you anymore, Jane," he said, anger creeping back in. He waved a hand and his armor began to reassemble on his arms and chest. Mjolnir whizzed through the air, smacking into his outstretched hand with a meaty thwack.

"You're… you're going…?" Jane asked, hurt at his dismissal in spite of everything. And under that, disgusted at the sigh of relief she had to suppress.

"I swore that I would return to the Avengers Tower before morning. SHIELD received a transmission from… " He stopped short and shook his head. He was doing that more and more – stopping mid-sentence, as though he had said more than he meant to about SHIELD. About the part of his life that happened when she wasn't around. _Keeping things from me_. It left Jane cold. But she could hardly complain. "Suffice it to say, there isn't time. Not even for this." He grimaced, his expression bitter. "Perhaps especially not for this. If you won't tell me what truly holds you back, there is no point to me staying here."

"Thor, I just…"

"I hope to see you soon." He paused in the doorway, but didn't turn around. "I love you, Jane. But… I cannot wait forever."

He was gone before she could reply, the door closing quietly behind him. A moment later, the distinctive whoosh of his flight rattled the windows of her London flat.

She stood there staring at the door for long minutes, her conflicted tears turning angry.

"Well why the hell _not_?!" she finally snarled at the offending surface. Childishly, she snatched an accent pillow off of the nearby sofa and threw it at the door with all her might. It bounced off and tumbled ineffectually to the floor. "You of all people have _forever_ to wait! We're not all so lucky!"

With a huff, she wiped at her eyes and shook her head. She was exhausted. But she didn't want to go to bed yet.

She didn't want to dream yet.

Instead, she left the abused throw pillow on the floor and meandered miserably into the bathroom, stripped off her clothes and turned on the shower as hot as she could stand it. The room was soon sweltering with steam. The burning water felt cleansing in more than just a physical sense, and Jane stood underneath the scalding spray until the heat gave way. She shut the flow off before it could turn icy. She stood there, naked and dripping, staring at the tile, for a long time.

She _did_ love Thor. She did. Or rather… she _cared_ about him. A great deal.

A small part of her was able to admit that she'd spent so long waiting for him that it almost seemed like a waste _not _to love him – and that maybe she was in love with the _idea_ of him...

No! No she _did _care. She cared… but that was all. It wasn't… enough. Not enough to overcome… _that. _

Jane felt her cheeks heat.

Her own mortality wasn't the problem, not really. While it hurt to think of, it was him that would be left behind when she died, not her.

Neither was her work the issue, though the seemingly limitless funds at her disposal now that Stark Industries was sponsoring her research meant that she had enough means to explore her theories as far as she could desire, and it was keeping her busier and busier these days. Even so, she could have taken a day off to tie the knot if she _really _wanted to. That wasn't what was holding her back either.

Nor was it that Thor had left her waiting without word for two full years, or that he was keeping secrets from her now, though these things weighed heavily on her thoughts, especially now that he'd taken up with SHIELD.

All of it paled in comparison to the real motivation of her hesitation. But she could never tell him the truth. She could barely admit it to herself. He'd think she was insane. Almost as insane as she knew she really must be.

She toweled off, dried her hair, climbed into her favorite pajamas and put on a pot of tea. Some chamomile would soothe her ragged nerves. She stood beside the stove, staring at nothing, working very hard not to think about anything, until the kettle whistled. Moments later, she was curled up on the couch with the steaming cup warming her hands. She turned on the TV and tried to let it numb her mind, but the tears that the shower had washed away kept trying to escape again.

She didn't really see the screen. Instead her eyes drifted down to the coffee table, where a dog-earred copy of _Alice in Wonderland _lay tempting her to open its pages. Beside it was a stack of old Disney movies she'd dug up out of a box of her childhood things she had in the closet.

The tea was hot and calming. She began to hum quietly to herself.

"_A very merry unbirthday to you! Who me? Yes, you! Oh me!" _she sang quietly into the rising steam, and it let her smile just a little through the hurt. That song always invaded her head when she drank tea, ever since she was a small child pretending to be an attendee at the Mad Hatter's tea party. _"Let's all congratulate us with another cup of tea! A very merry unbirthday to me!"_

She had always adored the story, both the book and the film. Her father had read it to her as a child, and she grew to appreciate it more with each passing year. Sometimes she wondered if she had become another Alice, falling through wormholes instead of rabbit holes, and finding herself in worlds just as mad as the Cheshire Cat predicted.

More recently still, as she had yet another reason to be preoccupied with Wonderland …

At length, her eyelids began drooping. She could avoid sleep no longer. And in truth, she didn't want to avoid it. Guilt gnawed at her. But so did the pull of her dreams. The world was bleary with the haze of her physical and emotional exhaustion, and she could already feel herself teetering on the edge of the rabbit hole, ready to plummet into the dark bottomless pit of slumber. The thought was paradoxically exciting, giving her sleepiness a surreal quality, making the room spin slightly.

Not for the first time, she thought to herself that she really must be crazy.

Resigned to her giddy guilt, she turned off the mindlessly chattering TV and climbed into bed. Exhaustion pulled at her eyelids. Through her lashes, her dissolving vision fixed on a vase situated on her window sill. It contained a single red rose that she had purchased from a street vendor that afternoon; she had taken to keeping one there, where she could see it before she slept, and when she woke up each morning.

In the dark, the moonlight gleamed from its supple curves, washing its lines almost white with its silver beams. _Red roses painted white… how ridiculous, it's the other way around… _she nearly laughed, but she was too sleepy to even sigh. Two more tears leaked, unheeded, from under her lashes. Within minutes the lonely emptiness of her bedroom was lost to the darkness of sleep.

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* * *

When Jane opened her eyes once more, she was surrounded by green and gold, sunlight and shrubbery. She breathed in a shaking breath at the familiar scene: a formal garden, walled on all four sides with towering hedges. The hedges were dotted with heavy-headed white roses. A few of them, she noted, were stained red, and the sight very nearly made her smile, but only succeeded in bringing more tears to her eyes. White granite flagstones formed paths through the green lawns and topiaries cut into fantastical figures, all intersecting in the middle of the space where a great golden sun dial stood useless - for in spite of the daylight, its needle never cast a shadow to codify time.

Dreams stood outside of time, she supposed. It meant nothing here.

And she was no longer alone.

"You've been crying."

Jane stiffened and turned.

Loki sat cross-legged on the lawn beside the hedge, a deck of playing cards disarrayed in mid-shuffle occupying his hands. His hair was loose around his shoulders, and he wore a green tunic and soft leather trouser – his "home clothes" as he referred to them; what he wore when he wanted to be comfortable. She couldn't remember the last time she'd seen him in armor. A can of red paint stood half empty nearby, the brush laying where she had discarded it the night before, left to ooze its sticky contents onto the unassuming grass.

_White roses painted red… _like a mirror reflecting her waking life, the same picture in reverse. _I've stepped through the looking glass._

_And here's another handsome prince, mirrored, the complete reverse of the other._

At the sight of Loki's coldly beautiful face so open and unguarded with curiosity and reluctantly worried, her eyes softened. He was so familiar to her now; this dead man that haunted her dreams. Her heart skipped in her chest, and then began to pound. Breathless, she tried to speak, to brush off his concern, but it was no use. Tears tracked her cheeks once more, and she looked away.

Loki tossed aside the playing cards and rose, swift and graceful, to cross to her, his brow furrowed with concern and displeasure. He didn't like it when she cried. His hands also had a weight of strength, but they didn't feel like Thor's hands. As they curled around her shoulders, they didn't feel like a burden. He rubbed them, tilting his head trying to catch her eye. When he succeeded, he flashed her a sly, teasing smile that, now that she knew him, never failed to elicit an answering smile from her, no matter how down she was.

"Let me guess," he said, rolling his eyes up in mock thoughtfulness, "Hmm… your dress maker mis-measured your waistline and all your gowns are ruined. No? Very well… a barmaid tipped a pitcher of ale down your back and everyone laughed at you. Not it either? Ah, I know! You ordered that odious sounding "take out" again and now your stomach is sick – ouch!" Loki pretended to cringe in mortal pain as Jane slapped him half-heartedly on the shoulder. "I told you that filth was hazardous to your health. When _will_ you learn to listen to me, Jane?"

Jane huffed out a quiet laugh, even as her chest constricted painfully. How could she hurt so much, and still be smiling? Thor had had this effect on her once… a long time ago. Now, only Loki, here in her dreams, could make her smile through her pain.

As she sniffed back her tears and wiped them away, a nearly overwhelming urge assailed her; she wanted to tell him everything. But she didn't answer him.

Instead, she stepped back, out of his reach, and after a moment, his hands dropped back to his sides, accepting her silence, as she had done for him in the past.

As one they turned and together walked farther into the garden to see what amusement awaited them there tonight; it was always something different, though if what they found didn't suit them, there was always croquet. The mallets were even carved to resemble flamingos. And if all else failed, there were always roses to paint.

All the while as they walked, Loki stayed close by her side, talking animatedly to manipulate her from her sadness, and all the while Jane gratefully let him, refusing to allow herself to dwell on the truth.

It wasn't her mortality that kept her from marrying Thor. There were ways around that, or so she had heard. And it wasn't her work, which had never been better. And it wasn't the secrets Thor kept from her.

It was this secret that she kept from him.

It was this insanity.

Loki, brother of Thor, was dead. She had watched him die in the desert wastelands of an alien world. She knew with certainty that he was gone beyond any reach, in the most final way possible.

But every single night, she dreamed of him.

She knew it was a dream. She knew that Loki was dead. She knew he'd been a ruthless, egomaniacal sociopath in life. She knew she had a wonderful, caring, amazing man - _the handsome prince _\- practically begging her to be his wife. She knew what she _should_ do, and what she had waited for and wanted for those two long years.

None of it had prevented this. And though she didn't know when or how or why it had happened, whether it was miserable luck or madness or some massive character flaw, it was becoming increasingly difficult to deny the truth: She had stepped through the looking glass, and while her lover waited impatiently for her on the other side, her heart was here, in this dreamscape beyond the edge of sleep.

Somehow, despite everything, she had fallen hopelessly in love with a dream of a dead man.

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* * *

TBC

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AN: So, cheesy as hell, right? Oh, just you wait… but if you're bored and have nothing better to do, give it a chance. The characters may seem a bit ooc; my defense is that a large part of the story takes place inside a dream, and I'm operating on the theory that in a dream, all your mental and emotional defenses are down; who you are when you're awake might be totally different from who you are when you're asleep, right? Meh, just roll with it…

I actually had about 90% of this story written, and then I lost the flashdrive it was stored on, which caused me to temporarily die inside, mercilessly tarred, feathered and lynched by my muse; I eventually recovered from the hanging, but the feathers won't come off... So anyway, this is a rewrite; even the outline had to be re-written – and this time I'm uploading as I go, dagnabit! I'm also still working on my primary lokane series, so, if by some miracle this story has piqued your interest, please be patient, more will be coming soon!


	2. Sweet Dreams

**Disclaimer: **I own nothing except the original plot of this story, and even that was inspired by Disney movies. Not for sale or profit!

**A/n: **Well, since I love you all so much for reading and reviewing, here's my cheesy valentine to you – more story!

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* * *

_**Chapter 1**_

_Sweet Dreams_

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_Sweet dreams are made of these  
Who am I to disagree?  
Travel the world and the seven seas  
Everybody's looking for something…_

_-Eurythmics_

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* * *

_Once upon a time…_

The first time Jane dreamed of Loki was the night Thor returned from Asgard.

It was an early night, and a memorable one for Jane. She was not one to fall into bed with a man; and when she thought of it, she realized with some discomfort that at that point she and Thor had only spent a total of a week's worth of days together - and most of that time had been spent fighting alien invaders. In fact, she would later realize that their entire relationship up to that point was based on brief periods of flirtation and steamy kisses stolen between fiery explosions, heart pounding spaceship chases and episodes of mortal combat. It never really occurred to her at the time to wonder how they would get along when they didn't have a constant stream of adrenaline fanning the flames.

But when he had stepped from the light of the Bifrost on the balcony of her flat, none of that could have mattered; they had pined for each other for over two years. That kind of tension could only be answered in one way. Eric, Darcy and Ian had stayed only long enough to greet Thor and promise to see him again soon, before they made their hasty exit, exchanging knowing smirks, snickers and lewd comments in stage whispers (mostly Darcy). The reunited lovers had barely heard them, and the door had barely clicked shut before they forgot everything but each other.

That night, lying warm, sated and exhausted in Thor's arms, she had drifted off to sleep and entered her conscious dreamscape for the first time.

It did not start with Loki. It started with Frigga.

When she first became aware of her dream, Jane found herself in grassy meadow, fronds of grass rustling all around her knees in a breeze she couldn't feel. The sprawling savannah was lit bright as noonday, which she found strange, because it appeared to be night; the sky overhead was inky black, and wheeled with sparkling stars, soaring comets and winking meteors that streaked the sky like drops of rain.

In the distance, at the very heart of the endless meadow stood a massive ancient tree, its gnarled roots mounding around it like coiled serpents, its twisting trunk, so large it would take hours to circle, plummeting skyward. Its great leafing branches burgeoned up and outward in a great green nimbus that intermingled with wisps of cloud, blocking out fully half of the sky. Within its leafy depths shone clusters of misty, shimmering lights. As Jane moved closer, each step carrying her miles at a time, they solidified into focus: worlds. Planets of every color and shape and sort, some ringed, some concealed by asteroids, some swirled with colorful gasses, others barren and rocky, some covered in glittering ice, others roiling with liquid fire, yet others green with rampant plant life, red with shifting sands, or blue with endless oceans. All of them hung suspended like ripe fruit from the branches of the great tree, each connected to the other by the timeless intertwining branches.

_Yggdrasil._

The name was in her mind before she could think to wonder. Here was the World Tree, resplendent as any of the ancient Norse could have imagined it. There was no shade in its far-reaching shadow as Jane passed under the vast canopy. The twinkling of the realms gave the illusion of twilight on a summer night, where children run between the glowing pools of lamplight in search of fireflies.

By that light Jane watched as the great roots before her rearranged themselves to form a staircase, leading up towards the trunk of the tree. As is the way of dreams, Jane did not question whether she should climb them. They were there, so she did. Time lost all meaning, and she may have climbed for months, or only moments, before at last she reached a landing. It took the form of an oblong bowl, carpeted with soft green grass. The stairs continued up, winding around the great trunk up into the shadows beyond sight and imagination. What lay that way was not for her to know.

Frigga was waiting for her there upon the lawn. She looked strange in lacy, high-necked Victorian gown of pure white, but the strangeness did nothing to mask her beauty. Ever graceful, the queen was perched delicately upon an arch of exposed root, a parasol stood propped up against it on the lawn beside her and a large leather-bound book poised open on her lap. Jane could just make out the title, _Fairytales_, in gold embossed letters on the cover.

Frigga looked up from her story and smiled in welcome. Jane stepped off the stairs onto the soft grass, and walked over to her. Curious, she sat down beside Frigga on the wide, log-like root and peered down at the pages as Frigga turned them over.

Each page held the title of a story; but rather than the words, each tale was told in moving pictures, like movie screens, playing out scenes from movies.

Frigga turned past Snow White, the Little Mermaid, the Lion King, Cinderella, The Princess and the Frog, and Aladdin before she paused on Alice in Wonderland. Jane's favorite. They watched together for a time. Frigga's smile never quite left her face, but her eyes became thoughtful, intent on the story, while Jane split her time glancing curiously between the book and the dead queen.

After a time, Frigga looked up at Jane. She reached up and laid one hand against Jane's cheek. Her eyes shone with a wealth of emotions that made Jane's chest constrict: motherly love, gratitude, acceptance, admiration, expectation, regret and hope, all tempered with a sly and knowing wisdom that left Jane feeling very young and uncertain. She opened her mouth to speak, to say that she was sorry, or grateful, or confused. Frigga laid one finger against her mouth to stop her and shook her head. No words.

With one last wistful pat of the younger woman's cheek, Frigga stood and strode several paces away. In a display of strength belied by her delicate frame, she held the massive leather-bound book open in one hand as she traced her fingers over the little picture window in the page. Green arcs of energy sparked from their tips, splashing against the vellum and soaking in. Her smile turned apologetic as she met Jane's eyes and tossed the book on the ground between them.

The book never hit the ground; instead the ground opened up beneath it, falling away to reveal a crumbling, root-lined hole burrowed deep into the earth. Jane peered over the edge, fascinated, as the book tumbled, flapping wildly, down into the abyss. There was no light in the tunnel, but its interior was perfectly visible nonetheless and she could see that it plummeted far down into the heart of the world. If there was a bottom, it was beyond her sight.

Bewildered, she looked up to find Frigga, holding out a hand to her, as though to help her up from her seat. She stood at the lip of the hole. If Jane reached for her, she would fall.

_Follow the white rabbit down the rabbit hole. To Wonderland…_

A thrill of excitement danced up her spine, and she reached out automatically, then hesitated, pulling her fingers back before she could touch Frigga's outstretched palm. It felt as though she was teetering on the edge of something more than merely a bottomless pit.

This was a decision. To act was to agree.

Agree to what?

She met Frigga's eyes once more, but found nothing but an enigmatically unreadable smile.

Worlds hung in the balance. Jane could feel it.

And yet, it was just a dream. And Jane wanted to see Wonderland.

She reached for Frigga's hand.

Frigga reached past her, gripped her around the wrist, and pulled. Jane lost her balance and tipped forward. Then she was weightless.

She caught one last glimpse of Frigga, shrinking into the distance high above as she watched Jane fall, her face tight and tear-tracked with yearning, as though she ached to go with her. She held up one hand in farewell. Then there was nothing but earthen walls rushing by until they too were lost in darkness.

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* * *

As it sometimes happens in dreams, Jane lost all sense of the dimensions of her dreamscape, and it passed without passing as she shifted in and out of awareness. Then suddenly there was a splash, a wash of warmth, and Jane opened her eyes to find herself submerged in a warm, vast sunlit ocean of salty water. She thought of Frigga, crying on the lip of the rabbit hole. _Not water. Tears. _In the story, Alice had nearly drowned in an ocean of her own tears; now Jane was plunged under the deluge of Frigga's.

Jane swam for the surface high above, but no matter how vigorously she stroked at the water, she continued to sink. Down, down, down she sank, kicking the whole way, fighting a force she could neither understand nor overcome.

As she descended the dream began to transform around her. Contrary to logic, the water became less and less dense as she descended, lightening slowly from something like rain, to a heavy mist, to a fine fog, until, by the time her feet struck the ocean floor, she was no longer swimming through water, but running through air, and she was not surrounded by blue-green waters, but towering walls of green leaves rising all around her.

A hedge maze. There was no more sign of the ocean but the blue sky high above, though she was still dripping wet. She wondered if she would dry faster if she ran in a circle.

"_Inward, outward, upward, downward, come and join the chase, for nothing could be drier than a jolly caucus race!" _

Humming, she spun around and around, giggling quietly as the water flew away from her in arcs rather than droplets to splash against the hedge in a deluge, leaving her completely dry.

Rustling caught her attention. Jane stopped short with a gasp, holding her breath. She looked around, but there was no one in sight, and after a moment, her mind drifted, distracted by the stretch of the path away from where she stood. She found her feet carrying her forward before she knew she was moving. It didn't occur to her to question it; though she was more aware than she'd ever been in a dream, the dream still had a will of its own that rivaled hers.

Wandering for a time, she came upon a number of topiaries dotted with the massive white roses, and beneath them stood sloppily streaked cans of red paint, each with the handle of a brush sticking out. She instantly recognized it, as one does in dreams – she was in the hedge maze outside the Red Queen's garden!

As she began eyeing the paint cans thoughtfully, her mind drifted uncannily back to Thor, and began replaying the past few hours she'd spent with him with a strange mixture of afterglow and unease, the kind one feels when one has done something wonderfully daring, and is mortified for having had the audacity to do it. But it was fine, she assured herself again and again over the clenching in her gut that felt something like panic. It didn't matter that she'd rushed in. She was going to be with Thor forever.

She suddenly lost all interest in the paint cans, and began to wander aimlessly. The maze seemed endless and full of possibility, and the red paint strangely unappealing.

Another rustling in the greenery when there was no breeze to stir the leaves arrested her attention, and it was then that she first felt his eyes on her. She looked up.

Loki stood at the far end of the long stretch of the greenery, in a gap between the hedges, observing her meandering with a stillness that put stone to shame. He was in full armor, all dark leather and gold plating, his green eyes seeming to bore holes right through to the back of her brain as he watched her with intent curiosity and something like accusation.

Her first reaction had been to be struck with just how intimidating and unearthly beautiful he really was. So different from Thor, who had his own masculine beauty, but warmer, less complex – Loki was the labyrinthine, enigmatic darkness to his brother's pure, direct light. Polar opposites.

Something in her had wanted to cross that distance and go to him. The urge was so powerful that she felt sure that if she lifted her feet she would fly straight to his side by sheer force of will.

Instead she ran from him, turning to dart away through the hedge maze, heedless of direction, only seeking to get _away. _She could feel him following her, as one always can in a dream. Yet the terrible, cloying terror that dreams of being hunted always evoke was mitigated, softened by a kind of distant muffling that she could not place. She was frantic avoid him, but it was the giddy, near panicked delight of a child being chased by 'it' in a game of tag.

Though she ran for what seemed like hours, she didn't see him again. But she could always _feel_ him nearby, as though she had developed a new sensory perception more real than sight or sound, and it existed solely to detect his presence. He would gain on her, only to lose her in the hedge, circling around sometimes to try to head her off. She evaded again and again, flushed and smiling broadly, all conflicted, uncertain thoughts of her tryst with Thor and her own questionable behavior forgotten as she sprinted through the maze. She darted left, then right, and he was suddenly on her heels, right behind her! She put on speed, but she could swear she felt his breath against her ear, as a whisper threaded along every nerve ending she possessed…

"_Jane…"_

She woke.

He didn't catch her. She lay there in her bed beside her new lover, her heart pounding, staring at the ceiling and feeling strangely bereft. _Next time, I'll catch him… _ She shook herself, a wistful little smile playing on her lips. It was a dream, and it had been oddly wonderful, but now it was over. She turned to look at Thor, his bare chest gloriously accented by the slant of morning sunlight through the window, and in her fascination the dream was quickly dismissed. It was just a dream.

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* * *

But the next night, when she became aware of her dreams, she was in the hedge maze again. And so was Loki.

And that was how it was every night after.

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* * *

Days were spent elbow deep in research, exploring the technology Erik had developed during the convergence, followed by evenings spent exploring every inch of her alien boyfriend. And by night, while Jane slept beside Thor in the waking world, she dashed through her dreams with Loki in a mad game of hide-and-seek crossed with tag.

The two of them circled each other endlessly, though never quite drawing as near as they had that first night. They were magnets with like poles, ever pushing at each other, and each time they drew near some invisible force barred them from coming together, held them apart and pushed them in unpredictable directions.

Some nights she was indeed the one who did the chasing. The hedge maze seemed endless and utterly random, and there were times she didn't see him at all, only felt his presence, heard his footfalls, caught a scent on the wind of something cool and oddly familiar that she knew, with that knowing that happens only in dreams, was his scent.

Every now and then, though, they did catch sight of each other. Their eyes would lock across the distance, through a gap in the maze, or down the length of the passage between the hedges before one or the other of them would dart around the bend. Sometimes he looked annoyed, sometimes amused. A couple times he seemed furious, and once, she was certain she saw tears on his cheeks. But always, when their eyes met, he looked curious.

Never in her life had Jane had such vivid, memorable dreams. And while she was still subject to the seemingly random compulsions of that every dreamer experiences in dreams – to run, to seek, to act, to chase, through no choice of her own - she was oddly and acutely aware of herself and the fact that she was dreaming.

Vivid as they were, and strange as it struck her that she had the same dream every night, she couldn't bring herself to examine it too closely. Every time she thought to question it, her mind just sort of skittered away from the subject. Neither did she feel like she could talk about her dreams, though Thor asked about them once, when she woke to find him watching her intently.

"Your brow furrowed as you slept. Were you dreaming?"

"I… it's strange, I …keep having the same dream. Over and over..."

"A good one I hope."

"I don't know. It's not exactly good, but it's not really bad either. Just… strange."

"In what way?"

Jane tried to tell him, but she was surprised to find that she couldn't bring herself to speak the words. She had murmured something superfluous and indistinct, then hooked her leg around his and kissed him. Sufficiently distracted, he rolled on top of her and didn't ask about it again. She was later disappointed in herself for using sex as a diversion, but the idea of sharing her dream almost felt wrong enough to justify it. She didn't understand her own reluctance, but there was something inexplicably private about her dreams in the hedge maze with Loki. Something that was for them alone.

No - she had to remind herself on more than one occasion - for _her _alone.

Loki was dead, and she was dreaming. Even if he had been alive, he could not be inside her dreams. He was not really in that hedge maze beyond the rabbit hole, and neither was she.

She knew this. And yet…

When their eyes met, she could swear she could _feel _him there.

It did trouble her that she didn't feel comfortable talking with Thor about it. But she didn't talk much with Thor at all, actually. Not about anything terribly deep. Most of their time together was taken up with the newness of their intimacy, teasing, flirting, touching, kissing. It wasn't that she didn't want to talk to him – she did! She wanted to learn everything about him. But when they talked, they seemed to somehow fall out of sync with each other, and their interaction became difficult and awkward. Everything flowed so much more naturally between them when they stopped trying so hard and just let their bodies take over. Why waste time talking, when it was so much easier to touch?

Jane knew that wasn't right. They should be able to talk to each other about something other than sex. But their relationship was still new, and they would work it out. They had worked too hard, and cared too much, for something stupid like small talk to get in their way. It _had_ to work out.

So in spite of her worries, she spent her days in a sort of honeymoon bliss with Thor, and her nights playing cat and mouse with the dream of Loki in the hedge maze. It was an odd dichotomy. But totally innocuous.

Then everything changed.

.

* * *

Thor was called away suddenly. Something to do with the Mandarin incident in New York. SHIELD had put all the Avengers on standby, but even though it was all over before he any of them knew about it, Thor insisted on going to New York anyway. Word had it that Tony Stark was having surgery to remove the shrapnel from his chest. Thor had gone on at length about the bond forged between comrades in battle and how he would not feel right leaving the Iron Man to face his destiny alone. Not to mention, Jane had learned through the grapevine that Stark Tower was being rebuilt as a base of operations for the Avengers initiative, and Thor's input was wanted, but he wouldn't say much about that when she pressed him. And Jane, feeling guilty for keeping her own secrets, however harmless, felt wrong demanding to know his, especially if it was a matter of global security. The less she had to do with SHIELD the better, she decided.

And so Thor left that day for the first time since his return. As such, that night Jane was alone in her bed for the first time since the dreams of Loki began.

It was as though Thor had been a buffer between them, the force that had kept them lost in the green all along. The moment he was gone, Jane finally found her way into the Red Queen's garden.

In her dream she was chasing Loki. There was no reason for it – there never was. Sometimes she had vague thoughts that she needed to tell him something, but when she tried to remember what it was, it swirled away from her like mist ghosting through grasping fingers, and all that remained was the compulsive need to find him. The roses seemed to call her on, rustling with her prey's passing as she ran the labyrinthine twists and turns of the hedge maze. Fleeting glimpses teased her from the corner of her eye, of gleaming green and gold, pale skin, dark hair, the swift, graceful motions that she was never quite quick enough to catch head on.

She ran forward through the maze so hastily that when she suddenly reached the center, the garden seemed to explode before her and swallow her into its midst before she realized what had happened.

Spinning about, gasping in surprise at this new place, she turned in circles, taking it in, the flagstones walks, the great topiaries with white roses, red paint cans ringing bases, just as they had been scattered through the hedges, a large marble table with a checkered board atop it for playing games, a deck of playing cards stacked in one corner; and rows of tiny, ostentatious flowers in neat square beds that gave off a faint, musical hum. The lawn was dotted with croquet wickets.

_Wonderland…_ Her first instinct was to look around for flamingos and hedgehogs, or at least a white rabbit. She turned in an abrupt circle, wondering where they might be kept.

This was how she found herself face to face with Loki for the first time.

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* * *

He stood so close behind her that she startled at the sight of him. Gasping, she stumbled backwards so that she nearly tumbled over one of the wickets. Like a striking snake, his arms shot out and his long, pale fingers enfolded her shoulders, steadying her as though by instinct rather than intent.

And with that touch, after so many nights of chasing and fleeing, their game of tag ended. The dream told her it was so.

Loki held her eyes for an intense moment. Jane looked back, her gaze trapped, her breath caught in her throat, her body frozen. The nearly companionable rhythm of the dream had lost its beat, and she didn't know what she should do. Or what he would do.

Then his face lit with a smug smirk. Jane's heart skipped at the sudden expression; the only thought that slipped past the blockade in her head was that it made him seem so much younger than he was. There was something of a little boy at play in that face so accustomed to severity.

"Caught you at last," he gloated. "I win." The expression sobered and became intent once more. "Now, Jane Foster, tell me why you have been invading my dreams."

Jane frowned, her brow furrowing. But she gratefully grasped the thread he'd taken up and pulled, unraveling a fraction of the tension that held her.

"I haven't been in your dreams. _You _have been in _mine_," she insisted, stepping out of his grasp and putting a few paces between them. Loki made no move to follow – and Jane felt no more urge to run. The chase was truly done.

Loki cocked an eyebrow at her.

"Is that so?" he countered, his voice lilting with curiosity and amusement, just an edge of derision with a shallow bite. "You sound awfully certain of that."

Jane opened her mouth, blinked, closed it, and looked away.

"Well… you're dead," she muttered. "Dead people don't dream."

She glanced up to see realization register on his face as he absorbed her words. He looked down, his eyes searching the lawn thoughtfully. She wondered how the corner of his lips could still be tilted upwards so stubbornly, even as he contemplated his own demise. Even the dream version of him was strange and incomprehensible.

"Of course, I see," he murmured.

He glanced up at her from under his brow, and her heart skipped again. She resisted the urge to take another step back, an urge that had nothing to do with the compulsions inherent in dreaming, and everything to do with the intensity of his eyes. He smirked at her. Was it playful, or dangerous? Jane couldn't tell.

"How do you know the dead don't dream?"

"I…" she pursed her lips. "Don't be ridiculous. Dead is dead."

Loki, who had turned as she spoke to take in the surroundings with a perplexed air, pinned her once more with that intense gaze. Jane was just considering running again, when he suddenly turned away with a shrug.

"Whatever you say," he said blithely, holding his arms open in a gesture of surrender. "And yet here we are. How do you suppose that came to be?"

"Well, you're obviously a figment of my imagination," Jane reasoned coolly, fidgeting with her hair as she said it. Pointing out that he wasn't real seemed rude, somehow.

"I see…" Loki looked at her sidelong, thoughtfully. He seemed to be sizing her up as he began to pace in a wide, slow circle around her. "So you've conjured me here from… from the afterworld, I suppose… with your imagination?"

"I… well, no…" Jane shook her head, watching him move, needing instinctively to keep him in her sight. "Look, you're not… I mean… _you _can't be the real Loki. The _real _Loki is gone. For good."

"So I am a fiction to you?"

"No! Or… yes," Jane shifted uncomfortably under the unreadable gleam in Loki's eye. "I don't know, I guess so. My subconscious created a version of you from my memories and my imagination. But you're not actually Loki. You only exist in my mind."

"Yet you do not know what to do with me," Loki observed, apparently pleased with her discomfort. "You do not know what I am thinking or what I will do. You do not know what to make of me. Why is that?"

"How should I know?" Jane retorted, walking over to sit on a nearby bench beside the path. "Who knows what dreams mean? It's the mind's way of dealing with the stress of daily life."

"And the stresses of your daily life involve me, how?" Loki questioned, amused interest lacing his words as he paced lazily along, his eyes straying from her to examine the layout of the garden once more. He stopped beside one of the flowerbeds, toeing the flowers gently with the tip of his boot and smiling more widely when their tones jangled and modulated like a dropped set of bells.

"They don't!" she snapped. "Not in the least."

A moment later, the day of the Convergence flashing through her mind, she wondered if that were strictly true. She'd watched him die horribly before her eyes. Something like that left a mark on the psyche.

"Perhaps it has to do with Thor then?" he mused, the edge of a sneer marring his tone. "Of course I don't know, being dead and all, but I assume the golden hero of Asgard won the day, and the _fair lady._" He abandoned the flowers, pacing back in her direction, ill-concealed irritation painted all over his voice and posture. He chuckled darkly, and seemed to be half talking to himself as he continued. "Sleeping with one brother while dreaming of the other... You're a rather naughty wench, Jane Foster."

"That's not… I'm not… that's _none_ of your business!" Jane nearly shouted, shooting up off the bench as he stopped before her. Her cheeks red, she pointed a flustered finger in Loki's face, barely caring that her overreaction could only confirm his assumption. "If anyone's to blame, it's you! I certainly didn't invite you into my head!"

She jumped in shock as he caught her by the wrist, pulling her hand out of his face, and jerking her close in the process so that they were suddenly nose to nose.

"Oh, I think not," Loki murmured at her, his tone a dangerous hush. He ran so hot and cold from moment to moment Jane could hardly keep up. "If the dead cannot dream, you can hardly blame me for anything from here on out. Let alone the indiscretions going on inside your head." He smirked with petty pleasure. "Having doubts about your shining thunder god?"

Jane reddened further. "It's not an indiscretion! I can't help what I dream about. And Thor and I aren't… we're good, great… We're not…" Her tongue seemed tied in knots as she tried to defend her relationship with her boyfriend, and realized she didn't know how. She had had more meaningful conversation with Loki in the past two minutes than she'd had with Thor in two days… Her face felt so hot and heavy with her blush that it was a wonder she could hold her head up. "It's none of your business!"

Loki let her twist in the wind for a moment, before he rolled his eyes and released her. Then he stepped back and shocked her again by bursting into a genuine, shoulder-shaking laugh. She stared at him, completely nonplussed.

"Do you know, I feel I haven't had this much fun in ages? Valhalla must be dull indeed. Or more likely Hel," he mused. Jane still couldn't understand how he could talk about his death so casually. "But you're too easy, Jane," he went on, smirking at her. "We'll have to work on that. If it's to be an eternity in a flower garden, I need more of a challenge to keep me entertained."

Jane narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips, irritated. But there was a quality about this Loki, despite his quick temper, a carefree air in him that peeked out at odd moments, that she'd never seen or heard anyone speak of. It made it hard to stay upset with him. She chalked it up to him being a figment of her imagination.

And he _wasn't _real, after all. No matter how much they talked about the dead dreaming, or an after life, or who was to blame for this strange recurring dream, Jane knew she must not forget that this was all in her head.

Acknowledging that fact, really facing it, made her feel safer, bolder. She let even more of the tension between them drain away. Dreams could be frightening and confusing, but she was in no real danger. Once she acknowledged that, her wariness began to melt, and her curiosity began to invade.

She began to think about her tone and attitude. Why was she angry with him? Loki done terrible things, sure, there was no question about that. But he had helped rescue her from Asgard. His mother had been killed defending her. And he'd died saving Thor's life.

She bit her lip. Just how much did she owe this man?

Enough that he deserved better than her disdain, even if he was just a figment of her imagination. No matter how difficult or dangerous he seemed, if this was a dream, which it was, there was no reason they needed to be at loggerheads. She started to say so outright, but then thought better of it. Instead, guided by some rash instinct, she baited him.

"Be careful what you wish for," she quipped, raising her eyebrows at him in challenge. "You just might get it."

Loki narrowed his eyes at her, calculating, before a slow smile grew across his face, boyish and wolfish all at once. His eyes sparkled with renewed curiosity, the same they'd held each time their eyes met during their interminable game of tag.

"One can only hope," he said, and there was something portentous in his tone.

And just like that, without fanfare or formality, their unspoken truce was settled.

He glanced around, examining their surroundings, his eyes falling at length on the game board.

"Well then, Jane," he said amicably, "since you have ransomed me from the afterworld for the night, why don't we have a game?"

.

* * *

TBC

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* * *

**A/n: **And so the goofiness continues. The first person to realize what the red paint and the white roses signify become worthy of Invisible Mjolnir (similar to actual Mjolnir, but invisible, which is obviously way cooler.) Hope everyone has a Happy Valentines Day! And remember, reviews are a healthy part of every muse's balanced diet; otherwise, he's just going to binge on vodka and chocolate chip cookies.


	3. A Wicked Game

**Disclaimer:** I still don't own the plot or characters of the MCU. This can't possibly be for sale or profit, no one would buy it.**  
**

**A/n: **Well, nobody has quite attained invisible Mjolnir yet, but a couple of you have come so remarkably close that I fear I am becoming predictable. But it was a delight as always to read your reviews. Tell you what, I will leave invisible Mjolinir somewhere on one of the nine realms, and if you find it, it's yours! Seems fair... muwahahahaha!  
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* * *

_**Chapter 2**_

_A Wicked Game  
_

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* * *

_What a wicked game you play, to make me feel this way  
What a wicked thing you do, to make me dream of you…_

_\- Chris Isaak_

.

* * *

And so it began in earnest.

By day, Jane continued her research, which had soared to new heights with the data her instruments had collected during the Convergence and the seemingly limitless cash flow from Stark Industries; time seemed to fly by she plugged values into her algorithms and got back almost impossibly promising results.

And all through the night, Loki was her constant companion in dreams.

Each night now she opened her eyes to find herself in the Queen's Garden, and Loki was never far away. Sometimes they talked, sometimes they bickered, sometimes they stubbornly ignored each other.

But mostly they played games.

It had been strained at first, even more awkward than small talk with Thor. They didn't always make it easy for each other. For a long time, she couldn't look at him without seeing the burning buildings and screaming citizens running through the streets of Manhattan, and he seemed incapable of going five minutes without baiting her, teasing her, or making snide insinuations about Thor.

Yet, as the dreams continued and they spent more and more time isolated in each other's company, those things gradually fell away. Almost as though it were by design, the games became a bridge. The awkwardness and antagonism between them was smoothed when they had something to do with their hands, a diversion to occupy their minds, and a benign outlet for their rapidly evaporating hostility. Disagreements could be settled on the game board, and silence wasn't so oppressive if one was concentrating on the score.

Facilitated by the common language of game play, they somehow began to communicate. It wasn't long before she discovered that she no longer saw Loki's past actions when she looked at him. She just saw Loki.

Unbelievably, by the time Thor had returned from New York two weeks later, the first tenuous strands of a kind of friendship had been forged.

Thor would not tell her much about his trip, no matter how deftly she pried; apparently SHIELD had made it clear that secrecy was part of protecting the world, and Thor took his oath as Earth's protector annoyingly seriously. Over the ensuing weeks, his 'secret missions' (many of which made the news, hardly secret and making his reluctance to talk about them all the more galling) took him away from home more and more frequently. Stark Tower was now commonly referred to by the news media as the Avengers Tower, and Jane suspected that was where he slept; she was never certain.

But even when Thor returned to her bed, and she slept twined in the secure strength of his embrace, whatever it was about his presence that had kept her running the hedge maze was gone. Loki's insinuation that she was playing a wicked game between the two brothers notwithstanding, she and Loki continued to meet in the dream garden beyond the rabbit hole.

.

* * *

Though having the same recurring dream should have become monotonous after a time, there was no danger of growing bored. Games of all sorts cropped up throughout the garden, different ones each night. They played checkers, chess, backgammon, Chinese checkers. She taught him all sorts of card games – he was, unsurprisingly, quite good at poker. Table games and sports equipment occasionally showed themselves as well, and they played badminton, jacks, ping pong, croquet, pool, even hopscotch once.

What surprised her, though, was that sometimes the games and toys that appeared were completely unfamiliar to her – but not to Loki.

"That's a Quinden set," he would say to her look of confusion. Or "these cards are for playing Seven Embers." Or "by the Norns, don't you even know how to shoot dwarven dice?"

It perplexed Jane that her mind could come up with such an array of new games without her direction, but, perhaps as a side effect of dreaming, she wasn't inclined to question it. Instead, she let him teach her his games, as he let her teach him hers.

.

* * *

Loki appeared to enjoy nothing better than a game of chance or skill – especially when he found an opportunity to cheat at it. It had angered Jane at first, needling her sense of sportsmanship and fair play. Loki had been completely unrepentant in the face of her outrage, merely a shrug and a smirk to acknowledge that he'd been caught.

"How do you do that?" Jane huffed, furiously reshuffling the deck after she discovered Loki had somehow been pulling the exact cards he wanted, supposedly at random, from his hand. "There's only one deck!"

"Magic, Jane, is like breathing for me," he explained sagaciously. "It is simply asking too much to expect me not to use it whenever I can. Besides, this was too easy. I _had _to cheat, or I was in very grave danger of falling asleep in the middle of the game."

"Oh yeah? Well, here's another." She poised the deck of cards in one hand and squeezed so that they flicked up into his face and scattered everywhere. "Fifty-Two Card Pickup."

Loki blinked as the cards wafted down around him, and met her glare with a raised eyebrow. Then he held out one hand, and with a flicker of green light, the cards all flew up from where they hand landed and rearranged themselves back into a crisp, neat deck in his palm. With a little smirk, he held the deck out to her.

"Next."

Jane's jaw dropped, and she snatched up the deck and examined it.

"What… how… it's even organized by number and suit!"

"A very simple re-assembling spell," Loki said smugly. "If the deck is viewed as a single unit, the spell brings it back together just as it was designed. Nothing could be easier."

"You… you… you jerk!" she cried, but she was smiling in wonder. "Magic is _definitely _cheating!"

"Jealousy is unbecoming in a lady, Jane," he told her pointedly.

And then they had both burst into laughter.

Over time, his duplicity stopped being so much an imposition to Jane, and rather came to be a game of its own, a subtext to whatever game they played. She began to become incredibly adept at telling when Loki was lying, and though he was a master of the art, she'd noticed that he had his share of subtle tells. It was merely a matter of hawk like scientific observation to deduce them.

Whenever she caught and bested him in spite of his underhanded behavior, the thrill of winning increased exponentially. And she had to admit she enjoyed the way it made his eyes spark with more pleasure than irritation when she managed it, almost as though it impressed and delighted him to be bested at his own game. He had not insinuated that she bored him since the first time, and she found herself pleased that he found her sufficiently 'challenging'.

Sometimes he did play fair, however, if only to keep her on her toes and willing, and if Loki seemed to relish their game play, Jane soon found that she enjoyed it no less. She began to actively look forward to falling asleep at night.

.

* * *

It occurred to Jane on more than one occasion that it ought to strike her as extremely surreal that she was spending so much time amicably getting to know Thor's egomaniacal dead brother over board games, but it was a dream, after all; things that would be awkward or impossible in the waking world felt completely natural in dreams, and this was no exception. So if it ever preoccupied her during the day, she wrote it off as something her mind needed to work through, and as she dreamed, it never occurred to her to question it.

Or rather, they both _did _question it, because they were both unquenchably curious beings; they wondered about it, to each other sometimes, speculated, but discussed all sorts of wild theories, from magic spells to hypnosis to sun spots. But in the end, they always accepted the fact that they had no answers.

There were times that Jane was all set to be truly curious about it – it was her own brain activity, after all – but Loki consistently treated the subject with amused disregard. All but once, when Jane mentioned that she sometimes she felt like he was _really_ there.

At that, Loki brought the conversation up short with a burst of quelling, not-quite-anger.

"I am _dead_, Jane," he snapped suddenly, cutting her off and pinning her with a piercing gaze that made her want to shrink back. "You would do well to remember it."

"Look, I'm sorry, all I meant was…"

"I like it here," he interrupted her, looking away. "I like being able to let my guard down for once. I like being able to be… open with someone. Don't spoil everything by forcing me to remind you of…"

He didn't finish, and Jane wasn't sure she understood, but she felt the weight of his words like a lead blanket over her head and shoulders. It was the first time she had felt his dangerous nature directed at her since that first night. The only time since that first night that she felt like running again.

But she didn't. She wouldn't let her own dreams cow her. And she wouldn't let Loki cow her either.

When she didn't respond, he looked back at her, and she met the intensity in his eyes with a hard look of her own, holding it just long enough to tell him that he was being childish and that he couldn't bully her. Then she turned back to their game – horseshoe, this time - and ignored him until he came out of his mood.

They didn't mention it again, and gradually they stopped theorizing about the dream altogether. It wasn't a difficult topic to give up; as is the nature of dreams, it was easier and more natural to accept things as they were. Like gravity or magnetism in the waking world, the natural law of this dreamscape was that Jane and Loki were together in a garden full of games and roses. And that was just the way things were.

.

* * *

As Jane relaxed into the inevitability of Loki's presence, she found she not only enjoyed their games; she realized that she also enjoyed his company.

She discovered that he could be an extremely smooth talker when he wanted to be. He seemed to know just how speak and exactly what to say to draw her out. When he was in the mood to be pleasant, the Loki of her dreams had an irreverent charm, and once he'd relaxed the environment, his sarcasm took on a funny tone rather than a biting one. He was elegant and eloquent, and could also be serious without being severe; he was a thinker, with a clear and curious intelligence.

She particularly enjoyed discussing her scientific theories with him, because he challenged her ideas, found the chinks in them, made her think in new ways. Talking of practical application was almost impossible – he tended to drift towards whimsical terms like 'magic' and 'spellcraft', incomprehensible and completely useless to Jane's purely scientific mindset.

"It doesn't make any sense!" Jane insisted to him once, after she had asked how Heimdall could see everything in the Nine Realms, and Loki had rattled off something about inter-dimensional quantum field tied magically to the facial nerves controlling the irises by a series of spells layered over time to amplify one another. "I understand inter-dimensional quantum fields, and I understand the physiology of the facial nerves. But then you start talking about 'spells'. You keep talking about magic, but what _is_ it?"

"Magic is a way of learning and being and doing," Loki retorted, "Just like your science."

"Sure," Jane rolled her eyes, "except that it _doesn't make sense._"

"Just because _you_ can't comprehend it, doesn't mean it is incomprehensible."

Jane made a low, warning noise not unlike a growl in the back of her throat. Loki laughed.

"Alright, alright," he relented, "Magic is… hmm… it's like an agreement. Look," he said, and reached out a hand to her over the chess board. Jane cocked a wary eyebrow, but humored him and put her hand in his. His fingers were cool, slender, strong, as they wrapped around hers. "Magic is a connection between two points of matter or energy that don't normally touch. As you know, at the most basic level, there is no difference between matter and energy, and no difference between here and there; everything is interwoven together. Magic reaches deep down from one point into the base matrix of existence, and rushes out to touch another point. When that other point reaches back in return, the connection is completed, and magic is made possible."

"That _really_ doesn't make sense," Jane mused after a moment's contemplation. "It would make magic completely unreliable. What if Point B doesn't want to reach back?"

"Why did you put your hand in mine?" Loki asked her pointedly.

"I…" she frowned. "Because you asked me to?"

"No I didn't. I only reached out for you. You could have chosen not to reach back, but you did." He pierced her with his gaze. "Why?"

Jane blinked, and looked down at their joined hands so she wouldn't have to meet his eyes. Why was she suddenly embarrassed…?

"I don't know… I just did."

"Exactly," Loki smirked. He ran his thumb over the back of her hand once, before letting go. She drew her hand back slowly. "When magic reaches out, we reach back, without thinking. Magic is always an agreement, Jane." He looked at her thoughtfully. "Even if we don't always understand what we've agreed to. Or why."

Jane stared back, her mind blank, except for one thing – the instant she had reached out and taken Frigga's hand in the shade of the World Tree. The wordless agreement… She felt her cheeks turn pink, still embarrassed, and she still didn't know why. Sucking in a deep breath, she cleared her throat and stubbornly shook her head.

"Nope, still doesn't make a bit of sense."

Loki rolled his eyes. "If you don't understand, then you'll just have to be satisfied with accepting that it works as I have said."

"I can't just accept it. I'm a scientist," she retorted. "Satisfaction with unanswered questions is just not in my nature."

Loki raised curious eyebrows at her. She had surprised him somehow. Then he smiled and looked down, and she got the impression that now he was the one that was embarrassed.

"You and I are going to get along just fine, Jane."

The theories they discussed were fascinating, in spite of all the nonsensical magic talk, and the more they talked, the more ideas she woke with the next day; she had applied several to her research, and was thrilled to find that they produced favorable results. She chalked it up to her subconscious mind working out more than her conscious mind could about the data in front of her. And it only made her all the more eager to return each night to her dreams. And to Loki.

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* * *

As nights passed, Loki's formal armor, leathers, and cape vanished layer by layer, until he was left wearing a green tunic over soft leather trousers – his "home clothes" he said when she asked, amazed to see him dressed so… well, normally.

"I can't look like a conquering king all the time," he said, giving her a look that said he questioned her mental capacity. "Did you really think I _never_ wore anything but full ceremonial armor?"

"You were wearing it when you first got here," she pointed out.

"Well, I didn't know if I was going to have to do any conquering, did I?" he shot back.

Jane rolled her eyes and fought not to smile. More and more she found she couldn't help it. He could be so disarming, and inconveniently distracting. She wondered if the real Loki had ever been so diverting when he wasn't subjugating entire races and destroying planets.

"So you're not wearing it now," she said, challenge in her tone. "Why is that?"

"I suppose I must want to be comfortable," Loki said stiffly, suddenly looking decidedly _un_comfortable, his tone defensive. "I'm _dead,_ after all, Jane. I think I'm entitled to relax a little."

Jane had to admit that was fair enough.

"Besides, how should I know?" he went on, turning the tables on her with a slightly suggestive smirk. "It's your dream, remember. Perhaps you're undressing me with your mind."

Jane did laugh at that, shaking her head as she giggled. When she looked back at him, he was scowling at her with mock severity that quickly morphed into a carefree grin, but Jane had been watching him closely these past weeks as they played their games, and she'd grown perceptive where he was concerned. There was a tightness around his mouth that said her unintentional scorn had stung him under that mask of sarcastic indifference.

Jane regarded for the first time her own clothes in the dream realm – it had never occurred to her to notice before – and found she wore the blue gown she'd been wearing the day they traveled to the Dark World. She narrowed her eyes experimentally, thinking hard. But try as she might, she could not get the gown to change into something less formal.

"I can't do it consciously," she admitted, her scientist's curiosity provoked. "The change must be subconscious. Maybe it means I've gotten used to you."

Loki cocked that expressive eyebrow at her, and tried to smirk, but it came out warmer than she was sure he intended. The subject was soon dropped, to his apparent relief.

.

* * *

The next time Jane dreamed, she was dressed in a comfortable old pair of flannel pajama pants and her favorite worn-out old Mickey Mouse tee shirt.

"I guess I decided to get comfortable too," she told a curious Loki when he commented on her 'outlandish attire'. "Playing games all night long in our pajamas. I feel like we're having a never-ending slumber party."

He asked what she meant, and as they faced off over a newly-arrived foosball table, she told him about the slumber parties she had attended as a child, the games they would play, about telling scary stories, making popcorn and smores, watching movies until dawn, even sneaking out of the house a few times to teepee the yards of classmates or teachers.

"The one rule of a slumber party is that you never fall asleep," she explained.

"Then why do you call it a slumber party?"

"Because your parents like to think you're sleeping instead of finding ways to get into trouble. But never mind that," Jane waved dismissively. "The point is, if you do fall asleep, you're fair game for any prank. The first person to fall asleep always gets the worst."

She went on to regale him with the all the basics, from drawing whiskers on their face, to duck taping them to the bed, to the classic shaving cream and feather gag. He laughed, apparently delighted with her story, and impressed, he informed her, with the ingenuity and mischief of Midgardian girl children.

"Well what about you?" she asked after a time. "Surely you got into some trouble as a kid."

It was on the tip of her tongue to ask about Thor, but something told her not to speak his name; not here, not now – that it might shatter the peace that had grown between them; that it might shatter this dream world beyond repair. The urge against it was so strong that she nearly bit her tongue.

It surprised her to realize how much the thought of never having this dream again upset her.

Fortunately, Loki was oblivious to her thoughts, and, slowly at first, then with increasing animation, he began to tell her stories of his childhood. He began with his favorite tricks, first designed and executed purely by wit, and then, as he learned to control his magic with ever greater alacrity, the illusions he used to trick the people around him, mentioning how it cost him a bit of popularity, but was worth it in the end to see the looks on some usually stoic faces.

"When the troops lined up to drill, I used to levitate little beetles into the chinks of their armor," he confessed. "They had to keep stock still while at attention, with the beetles crawling around under the armor."

"What a rotten little kid," Jane teased, giggling in spite of herself.

"Not at all!" Loki defended himself, his eyes tracking the ball between the little football players. "It was quality assurance. An Einherjar warrior should be able to withstand at least that much. I was weeding out the weak."

Jane could only laugh, thoroughly enjoying the stories, and enjoying picturing the man before her as a young boy, relatively innocent of all the troubles that awaited him one day.

She was further surprised when, without prompting, he branched out into describing other pursuits of his youth, talking with feeling about the beauty of the foothills that began just beyond the edge of the eternal city, his favorite place to play and explore throughout his early life. He would climb cliff sides or tall trees and spend anywhere from hours to days at a time nestled in some high place with a pilfered cache of honey cakes and a stack of books he'd taken out of palace library. One thing they had in common was their love of riding horses; Jane mentioned that she had spent summers of her childhood on her grandfather's farm, to which Loki had bragged of his skill on horseback, which, he went on, had given rise to jealousy and some rather incredible rumors about the parentage of his father's eight-legged stallion.

"Oh, ew!" Jane laughed when he told her the old rumor that had made its way into Norse legend, "nobody could actually have believed that!"

"You'd be surprised. My skill with shape-shifting was known as far and wide as my skill in the saddle. And people…" He looked away. "People are always ready to believe the worst of others. The more deranged and perverse the better."

"You're not honestly saying you can change your shape," Jane challenged him, hoping to distract him from what looked like the beginnings of a maudlin mood.

"Child's play," he told her boldly, letting her change the subject. "Literally, I've been able to change my shape almost since birth. I…" he trailed off, and Jane watched a shadow pass across his eyes. "I've been tricking people all my life." He shook it off, and grinned at her. "Maybe I'll show you sometime."

Jane could feel about a hundred questions crowding on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed them and wisely let the subject drop. Now wasn't the moment, and he'd probably just give her another magic lecture that she didn't understand. Instead, she asked him about his education.

"Histories, languages, astronomy, mathematics, interplanetary diplomatic relations, spellcraft, weaponry. The usual subjects. I always excelled with the magic masters, of course," he boasted shamelessly, and Jane smiled and rolled her eyes. "My mother insisted upon artistic pursuits as well; painting, sculpting, music. I never particularly enjoyed the lute, but I did enjoy singing."

"You sing?" Jane asked, suddenly intrigued. Impulsively, she insisted, "You have to sing something for me!"

"I said I enjoyed it, I didn't say I excelled at it," he told her, pursing his lips at the admission, as though he had said more than he intended to. "And I won't be singing, for you, or anyone."

"I'll sing for you if you'll sing for me," she blurted, twisting up her face a bit as she realized she'd said more than she wanted to as well. Her voice wasn't awful, but she was no singer. It was humiliating to contemplate.

Still, for reasons beyond her comprehension, she wanted to hear this man sing. Badly. So much so that she wondered if it was the dream changing its rules again; it had never occurred to her to want to sing or be sung to before, but now it was almost overwhelmingly intriguing to her.

He looked almost as interested as she felt, but all he said was, "Tempting, Jane, but I think not."

To distract her, he went on to talk about his physical and mental education as a warrior, describing the training all the young men of Asgard received – which sounded brutal to Jane, and gave her a whole new respect for the chiseled physiques of the Asgardians she'd encountered. He boasted that he was especially skilled with archery and throwing knives – from his tone of voice, Jane could tell he was really proud of it, even though he spoke with more self-deprecation than she had ever heard from him before.

"Not that being the best with knives won me any kind of respect," he said a bit sourly, his brow furrowing, his eyes distant. "It's a useful skill for women and assassins, but considered a dishonorable tactic for a warrior in battle." He smirked at her. "After all, it isn't _fair play_ to fight from a distance. We must always give the enemy a chance to kill us in return, or we must be cowards."

Jane frowned disapprovingly at that. He was trying to equate her irritation with his cheating at their game play with the Asgardian ideas about honor, but it wasn't the same at all. Plus, she didn't like the sexism inherent in the idea that a dishonorable battle skill was reserved for women. Nor, she realized, did she like the thought of anyone even obliquely insulting Loki simply because he was more skilled at throwing knives than running someone through with a sword. And she didn't like thinking of battles, period. She knew Thor and his friends almost considered war a sport, but she would never be the kind of person to find it anything but abhorrent, an occasional necessary evil, but not something to enjoy or celebrate. It wasn't in her.

"Fair play is for games," she said decisively, catching his eye. "If you're in a fight for your life, you don't worry about rules. You live, whatever it takes."

Loki looked at her for a long moment, his face serious, his eyes intense, as though her words held far more weight than she suspected. The corner of his mouth curled slowly upward. Jane felt like she must have missed something; as though what she had said, and what he had heard, might be two different things.

"On Asgard they would say that attitude is duplicitous," he warned her, but his expression remained approving.

"Well on Earth we have a saying: 'All's fair in love and war'."

Loki cocked his head at her, as though seeing her anew.

"Is that so?" he murmured, and the words again seemed heavier with meaning than they should be.

Their eyes locked.

Jane felt her chest begin to get tight as he held her with his intense gaze. His face relaxed further, became entirely serious, his gaze thoughtful, and for reasons far beyond her comprehension, her face began to heat and her heart started to pound in her ears. She could feel the weight of his clear green eyes from the top of her head all the way down to the tips of her toes, and had to swallow against the sudden dryness in her mouth. Strange that she'd never before noticed what a striking shade of green his eyes were. A beautiful hue. Mesmerizing.

He suddenly spun one of the foosball rods so hard that the entire table jarred, startling a gasp from her and sending the little ball flying into her goal.

"I win," Loki informed her smugly. He laughed as Jane shrilly protested, despite the clear victory, and the moment passed.

But Jane couldn't forget that it had happened.

It was because it was just a dream – because it was not real. But whatever the reason, Jane was stunned by how far she had let her guard down, and she could not figure out when she had allowed herself to grow so incomprehensibly comfortable with Loki.

.

* * *

TBC

.

* * *

**A/n: **Hope you enjoyed this chapter, fairly certain its the last semi-normal one in the story. Next: singing. I warned you it was coming, you have no one to blame but yourself.


	4. Another Night, Another Dream

**Disclaimer: **The plot and characters of the MCU and Disney lyrics belong to people who are very much not me. This story is not for sale or profit.

**A/n: **This chapter got too long (lot of that going around nowadays...) so I cut it in half; I'll post the rest shortly!

.

* * *

_**Chapter 3  
**_

_Another Night, Another Dream_

_._

* * *

_In the night, in my dreams, I'm in love with you_  
'_Cause you talk to me like lovers do.  
I feel joy, I feel pain, 'cause it's still the same  
When the night is gone, I'll be alone._

_Another night, another dream, but always you  
In the night I dream of love so true…_

_-Real McCoy_

.

* * *

The very next night, Jane found herself sitting cross-legged beside one of the topiaries, a paintbrush in hand, humming contentedly to herself while spreading thick crimson paint over the supple white petals of a massive white rose the size of a cabbage.

"What are you _doing_?"

Jane glanced up as Loki crouched down beside her to examine her progress.

"Painting the roses red," she told him matter-of-factly.

"Yes, I can see that. Why?"

"So that the Red Queen doesn't chop off our heads," she told him, all seriousness.

The look on his face said he was beginning to question her sanity, so she gave up being coy and laughingly told him about _Alice in Wonderland_, about falling down a rabbit hole, about white rabbits and dodos and cats that vanish, about mad tea parties and caucus races, and about singing flowers, croquet with flamingos and hedgehogs, playing card knights painting roses and the tyrannical Red Queen shouting, "Off with their heads!"

"This is her garden," she explained at last, looking around fondly. "It looks just the way I always pictured it."

"Is that so?" he exclaimed, clearly surprised, looking around as though for the first time. "How odd…"

"What is?" Jane asked, watching him with interest. He looked startled, and she thought it might be the most unguarded expression she'd ever seen on his face.

Loki shook his head, visibly gathering himself.

"It's just… because of these enormous flowers, I suppose. I thought we were somewhere else."

His eyes held a distant, almost whimsical quality as he said it, and the spark of Jane's curiosity ignited into a crackling blaze.

"Where?" she asked, wanting more to know about the emotions in his eyes than the place itself.

"Nowhere you would know," he told her, absently dismissive, clearly intending that to be the end of it.

But his eyes remained distant, as though he were peering back through the mist of the years at something only half remembered, like a memory that you aren't sure you didn't dream. The story began to slip from his lips as though of its own accord; his voice was low and quiet, as though he were concentrating too hard on the memory in his mind's eye to give it volume. Jane leaned in to hear him, and listened with rapt attention.

"It was a valley in the mountains of the World Forest that covers most of the North and West of Vanaheim. I found it by accident once, when I was exploring off-world with Thor. We were very young then, maybe thirty or forty, I can't remember, and we got into a ridiculous argument over some trivial thing – it seemed important enough at the time that I never told him about this, but now I can't even remember what it was about." The corners of his mouth turned up fondly at the memory. Jane watched, unblinking at the open, honest expression. She hardly dared breathe for fear of scaring it away. "In fact, I've never told anyone about this."

He glanced at her with a small, tentative smile, as though looking for encouragement – or perhaps rebuke. Jane realized that his voice had gained strength – he was telling her the story purposefully now, and it sent a rush of warmth tingling through her to realize the look on his face was expressing something like trust. He was trusting her, and waiting for some excuse not to. She kept her face very carefully blank of anything but unaffected interest – which wasn't hard, because she found herself fascinated. After a moment he continued.

"We fought," he reiterated, "and then went our separate ways in anger. I turned north, looking for some high place to sit and sulk deeper in the mountains. After an hour of wandering I discovered the cleft in the rock face quite by accident. It was covered in heavy foliage. It's been a long time, but I think I discovered it by tripping over a rock and falling into it face first."

He smirked at the memory of his own clumsiness, and Jane giggled before she could stop herself, trying to picture it and failing. She told him so.

"Yes, well, I was very young. No one is born graceful," he said stiffly, though he couldn't quite keep the self-deprecating smirk off of his face. Jane never would have thought he was capable of laughing at himself, even that much. "Anyway, the cleft turned out to be a tunnel. I followed it, and came out the other end into a sort of valley hidden between two peaks. It wasn't tended like a garden, but it wasn't a wild tangle like the rest of the surrounding forest either, and it was so beautifully ordered in its natural state that even after a thousand years, I have never forgotten my first glimpse of it."

"And there were roses?" Jane asked tentatively. "Like these?"

Loki shook his head, his eyes growing distant again. "No, I believe roses are indigenous to Midgard. But there were wild Golden Eyes, enormous ones, bigger than any I'd ever seen in Idunn's Garden on Asgard. And the golden apples were the most delicious I'd ever tasted." He caught her look of confusion, and to her complete gratification, explained without a single tease or sideways comment about her lack of education or experience. "Golden apples are a kind of fruit found on several realms within the World Tree. They have strange properties. They can heal almost any illness, and they bestow great strength and longevity. On Asgard we eat them from infancy. It is why the Aesir are so hearty and long-lived."

Floored at this revelation delivered in such a casual manner, Jane almost opened her mouth to ask the first of a hundred burning questions that flooded her tongue – which was, understandably, if these golden apples would work on humans - but she restrained herself. Listening to Loki talk so openly was more important.

He reached past her, leaning close so that he could run his fingers over one of the petals Jane had not yet painted red, testing the texture thoughtfully. Jane could feel the heat of his body against her shoulder.

"The golden apples grow in clusters from the center of a white flower that we call Golden Eye, which look very much like these roses, though the petals open more broadly. The variety on Asgard is small and delicate. But the golden eyes in the valley on Vanaheim were enormous, heavy-headed things, and they perfumed the whole valley. I have been to many places, seen many things, yet that mountain garden may be the most beautiful and peaceful place I've ever been, on any of the worlds."

Jane stared at the petal Loki touched, and felt she could almost see the idyllic mountain valley in her mind's eye, sunlit and peppered with large white flowers bearing fragrant golden fruit. There was wonder on her face as she turned to find him much closer than she'd expected. He glanced down and smiled at her. There was a hint of color high on his cheeks that she'd never seen there before. His skin was so flawlessly pale, it had never occurred to her that he could blush.

"It sounds perfect," she breathed, and meant it.

Her approval was met with a small, warm smile.

"I should take you there sometime. You'd love it."

Jane blinked several times, and then her blood seemed to turn to ice water in her veins, dousing the warm glow that had begun to spread from her chest out into her limbs. She was mortified to feel her eyes prick with tears, and cleared her throat.

"I think would have," she managed to say, scooting back slightly to put some distance between them. "But it's not possible now, is it?"

She watched, crestfallen, as the warmth and animation drained from Loki's face as reality reasserted itself between them.

Loki was dead.

This was a dream.

He would never be able to show her the beautiful hidden valley on a distant world.

Because none of this was real.

"Maybe that's why we're here," she said with a sad smile, turning away from the unbearable look of ill-concealed unhappiness on his face, and resumed painting her rose with renewed determination. They really should be red, she decided. Perhaps then she could forget the beautiful garden she would never see. "Alice's story ends when she runs from the Red Queen's garden and wakes up to find herself back in her dull, everyday life. And realizes she dreamed it all. Sometimes I need to be reminded that this isn't real."

She stopped painting, and made herself look at Loki, made herself display the sincerity of what she was saying.

"I wish I had known you when you were alive."

Loki winced as though she'd slapped him, and the look of regret that flashed over his features before he forced all expression from his face twisted her stomach in knots. He rose and turned away, headed for a dart board mounted on the green hedge that walled the garden. Jane wasn't sure if she was meant to, but she heard when he spoke under his breath, half a sigh, before he left her to her painting.

"As do I."

.

* * *

In the waking world, Jane worked hard to leave herself no time to wonder about the smell of alien flowers blooming in a hidden valley on the other side of the galaxy. And she did everything in her power to keep herself from thinking about the longing her dreams had planted somewhere behind her breast bone that was taking root in dangerous parts of her heart.

Fortunately, keeping herself busy and distracted was no trouble at all these days.

Thor had introduced her to a fully-recovered and rejuvenated Tony Stark, who had been singularly impressed with her theoretical models. That was gratifying on its own – the man was a genius. He was apparently impressed with her physical appearance as well, which he hadn't hesitated to make clear, in spite of the fact that Thor was standing not five feet away with Mjolnir in his hand. He needn't have worried – Thor merely laughed and agreed with him. That had sat wrong with Jane – shadowy visions of sexual harassment lawsuits danced in her head for a brief period – but she'd quickly forgotten any indignation or thoughts of retribution when Stark offered her an astronomically generous extension on the research grant his company had originally proffered. For that kind of money, he could ogle her all he wanted.

With Stark Industries currently funding her research, she had access to a previously unfathomable wealth of resources, and she was forging ahead with a nearly obsessive drive. The new theoretical models she was developing, which she'd cobbled together from her analysis of the Convergence data and ideas born of Loki's incomprehensible magic lectures, were now coming together into working gravitational field generators. Sketchy whispers through the scientific grapevine about Ian Quinn's questionable experimentation aside, these generators had all the potential of gravitonium, with a bare fraction of the risk and without the drawback of being so rare a commodity as to make them the stuff of fantasy. They had the potential to generate stable fields, and they could be reproduced ad infinitum if necessary.

If things continued at this pace, she would soon be able to generate gravitational anomalies similar to the ones that had occurred naturally at the Convergence, and control them by means of Erik's modified converters. It was the first step towards constructing her very own permanent and precisely directable Einstein-Rosen bridge. Her very own Bifrost.

Erik himself was over the moon about it. He worked with her as often as he could, though the more his mind healed from his encounter with the Tesseract, the more involved he became once more in his own research. Apparently he'd made some very influential contacts through SHIELD, and they were affording him inroads into his own interests. Jane was gratified to see him doing so much better, though she felt occasionally lonely.

Her isolation expanded exponentially a few days later when Darcy burst into the lab practically bouncing off the walls, a sheaf of heavy paper clutched in one hand.

"I got it! Yeah baby! Suck on that, Professor Mathers!" To Jane's quizzical look, Darcy stopped pumping her fist in the air and explained, "Mathers said I'd never …" She trailed off as Jane raised her eyebrows and stared pointedly at the page in her hand. "Oh, this! I got in to the graduate program at Oxford!"

Jane blinked. She hadn't even realized Darcy had applied. "That… that's fantastic, Darcy!" she said. "Which program?"

"Anthropology," Darcy said, grinning conspiratorially, "with a focus in Norse culture."

"Oh really," Jane laughed, "Can't imagine why."

"Yeah, I'm stoked!" Darcy laughed, then she sobered, chewing on her lip. "The only problem is… I'm not going to be able to... you know, keep up the intern thing… you know…"

There was an awkward pause, which Jane quickly filled with reassurances.

"Hey, I'll manage! Don't worry about me, if I need help Stark Industries can probably hire me minion or three to boss around."

"They won't be me, but I'm sure they'll do." Darcy grinned and hugged her. "And just so you know, I get custody of Intern in the divorce."

"You've been dating him for months," Jane huffed as they started sorting through the various projects she'd had Darcy working on; it was mostly paperwork, and Jane would just have to take it on herself for the time being. "Shouldn't you start calling him Ian?"

"Eh," Darcy shrugged. "It's kinkier this way."

Jane laughed and tried to be thrilled for her; but somehow, even with her still right next to her, she already missed Darcy's constant chatter and off color jokes; her friendship and her presence. But she couldn't say so; Darcy had never meant to be a scientist to begin with, Jane had known that when she took her on. It was people that interested Darcy, not data readouts and star charts.

She bit her lip thoughtfully. Darcy was really her only female friend. This could be her last chance for - she cringed inwardly – _girl talk_. It wasn't really Jane's scene… but she needed to talk to somebody…

"Don't take this the wrong way," she said hesitantly, "but… Ian's not really the higher education type…" Jane ventured.

"Nope, my baby's not the brightest crayon in the box," Darcy agreed without reserve.

"…so, um… how do you guys get along? What do you talk about?"

"I dunno. Stuff."

"But… you never have any trouble talking? Like… it's never awkward?"

"Not really," Darcy said thoughtfully, "When neither of us has anything to say, we just don't say anything."

"And that's not… I mean, you don't feel uncomfortable just… being together…?"

"Nooo…" Darcy shot Jane a knowing sidelong glance. "We're not talking about me and Ian, are we?"

Jane opened her mouth, then closed it, then smiled awkwardly and rolled her eyes.

"It's just… Thor and I don't seem to be able to just… talk, you know?"

"Hey, no female with a pulse could blame you," Darcy assured her, waggling her eyebrows. "There are better things to do with that that mountain of muscle than talk to it." Jane punched her lightly in the shoulder.

"Be serious!" she exclaimed, blushing through their laughter. "Whenever we just try to talk to each other, it's… I don't know. When there's no aliens falling out of the sky blowing things up, we just don't… really seem to have much in common."

"Maybe you're expecting too much," Darcy shrugged. "I mean, Thor's a sharp guy, but let's face it, next to you, pretty much everyone in the universe is going to sound like an idiot."

Jane blinked rapidly as Loki's sly smile flashed through her mind.

_Not everyone…_

She mentally waved that idiocy away before it could take root. There was no point in wishing for something as infinitely impossible as… she didn't even let the thought form.

But she couldn't banish it completely, and it lingered in the back of her mind as they got on with their work.

"Even if he's not a brilliant conversationalist, Thor's a pretty phenomenal catch, Jane," Darcy advised her as she left later that day. "Men don't like to talk much in general. Don't give up on all that gorgeous Asgardian man meat just because you're having a hard time getting him to open up. Make sure you give him a real chance before you do anything drastic."

_Drastic… _The possibility of drastic steps – like, say, breaking it off – hadn't even entered Jane's mind until Darcy voiced it.

Little did she know then that it was to be the first falling pebble that began an avalanche.

.

* * *

That evening found Jane and Thor curled up together on the sofa during one of the increasingly rare evenings when both of them were home, eating takeout and watching an adventure movie marathon on TV. Thor seemed completely content to watch the story play out with her curled up at his side, but Jane couldn't make herself focus on the screen. Her mind was running in circles. Darcy was right, she decided, she needed to give Thor more of a chance.

When the credits finally began to roll, she muted the TV, watching Thor shovel the last of the noodles into his mouth.

"You know, I've been working on some really interesting data in the lab recently," Jane mentioned casually.

"Really?" Thor replied, smiling at her. "That's wonderful, Jane. I am glad to hear your research is going well."

"It really is!" she said enthusiastically, clambering up on to her knees on the sofa so that she knelt facing him. "Hey, you know a lot about the Bifrost, right? I was wondering if I could bounce some ideas off you. See, there's this neutron drift that I haven't been able to account for…"

She rattled off a few points that she'd been batting around in her head – many of the same ones, she realized as she spoke, she'd been debating Loki about in her dreams recently. Thor listened attentively, nodding slowly, his brow furrowed as he tried to follow the flow of her ideas. When she finished summarizing her theory, she paused, watching him closely.

"So what do you think?" she asked after a moment. "Is it a problem with magnetic resonance, or is there some variable I've forgotten to factor in?"

"I…" Thor frowned, then shrugged at her apologetically. "It all sounds incredibly fascinating, Jane, but astrophysics was never my strong subject when I was a student, and it's been almost a thousand years since I have really turned my thoughts to such matters…"

"Oh…" Jane murmured, deflating. She shook herself. "Well, maybe you could think it over and…"

Thor was already shaking his head. "I'm afraid I'm not nearly as clever as you, Jane," he said with a fond smile. "Perhaps Heimdall could help you with these things; he knows more about the Bifrost than anyone, except perhaps my father," he said.

Jane momentarily forgot her disappointment over her failed attempt to connect to her boyfriend.

"Really?" Jane breathed, a jolt of adrenaline rushing through her at the prospect of picking the guardian's brain. "You think he would talk to me about it?"

"If I asked him to," Thor replied, chuckling at her excitement.

"That's… that's so fantastic!" Jane exclaimed, nearly bouncing on the sofa cushions. "I have so much I could ask him… How soon could I go?"

Thor opened his mouth to speak, then paused, glanced at her, and carefully closed it.

"Truthfully…" he said slowly, "now is not the time. Matters within the nine realms are… complicated at present. Heimdall has been rather busy."

"Oh…" Jane tried valiantly to hide her disappointment with smile. She was fairly sure she failed. "What sort of 'matters'?" she asked, trying to salvage the mood. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," Thor said, a little too hastily, "Just… some political friction between the realms that needs sorting out," he amended hastily.

"Oh," Jane said again, blinking. "That must… worry you," she tried. "Would you like to talk about it?"

"It is nothing that you should trouble yourself about, Jane," he said smiling. "Someday soon I promise I shall ask Heimdall to answer all of your questions. But look, the next movie is starting! Is not this Indiana Jones a great adventurer! He finds trouble enough for a man who never leaves Midgard!"

"I… yeah," Jane agreed, shifting on the couch and curling up beside him again. She tried to put everything out of her head and watch the movie.

He draped one massive arm around her. It was a gesture of affection. But to Jane, it just felt heavy and confining.

.

* * *

"_I look once more, just around the river bend," _Jane sang to herself. "_Beyond the shore, where the gulls fly free. Don't know what for. Why do all my dreams extend just around the river bend?"_

The song had been stuck in her head for days, and she constantly found her humming it whenever she surfaced from her work enough to be aware of her surroundings. She tried not to. She didn't like to think about why her subconscious was singing this song to her about the choice between settling for what's in front of your or gambling for something better.

"_What I love most about rivers is, you can't step in the same river twice. The water's always changing, always flowing. But people, I guess, can't live like that  
We all must pay a price. To be safe, we lose our chance of ever knowing what's around the river bend… Waiting just around the river bend…"_

_What could possibly be better than Thor?_ She did her very best to ignore the face that smirked at her from the memory of her nightly dreams. Thor wasn't perfect, but he was wonderful, and more than someone like her had any right to hope for.

And he was _real. _

Now if only he was _here._

Despite the borderline claustrophobia Jane had begun to feel in Thor's presence, she felt Thor's absence even more heavily. He was there with her of course. Most of the time… well, sometimes...

He was gone more and more to Manhattan. And it was becoming more and more clear whenever she saw him that there was something weighing on him, so that when he was with her, it still felt like he was a hundred miles away. She asked him more than once over the ensuing days what was the matter, but he always evaded with minimal responses. From what little he would say, she finally weaseled out of him that it was some kind of secret Avengers business, that it was "nothing she needed to worry about", and that it had something to do with a very verbal disagreement between himself and his father in the middle of the Asgardian throne room.

Somehow, the last upset her most of all.

"I… didn't even know you had left the planet," she had said when he told her, her voice hollow to her own ears.

Thor looked up sharply at her tone.

"Does that trouble you?" he'd asked, perplexed. Then he'd smiled easily, and she'd felt that old urge to slap him again. "Not to worry, Jane," he assured her, smoothing her hair back from her face with gentle affection. "The Bifrost connects worlds more quickly and easily than the London Underground connects stations. A short trip home for the day is hardly worth mentioning."

"But… I mean, you were millions of light years away, and I didn't even know you were gone…"

"Jane, you have no reason to worry," he'd chuckled, clearly dismissing her concern. "The Bifrost is well intact, and I will always come back."

She didn't like his tone then, and she still didn't; she used to say something similar to the three year old she babysat for in high school, who would scream and cry when his father left for work: _"Daddy always comes back." _

This was not the irrational tantrum of a child, this was a legitimate concern to her. She'd somehow managed to refrain from reminding him that he'd said that before, and it had cost her two years of heartache. _Two years must be nothing for him_. But what was just a blink of an eye for him was a significant chunk of her life…

Such thoughts raised serious questions for her about the nature of their relationship.

And brought back Loki's words from the first night in the garden, about doubting Thor.

She didn't _want _to doubt Thor… but just how far did she trust him? How far _could_ she trust him?

The more she thought about it over the days that followed, the more she didn't want to think about it. So she dove even deeper into her work, and without Darcy to draw her out, her single-minded work ethic reached obsessive proportions. And she kept humming that song…

"_I feel it there beyond those trees, or right behind these waterfalls. Can I ignore that sound of distant drumming? For a handsome sturdy husband, who builds handsome sturdy walls and never dreams that something might be coming? Just around the river bend… Just around the river bend…"_

Maybe it was to avoid thinking about anything else too closely. Maybe it was out of a desire for the ability to cross galaxies at the flick of her wrist so that her lover could never abandon her again. Maybe it was to erase the feelings of helplessness those two years had left her floundering in. Maybe it was just to distract her from wondering what he was keeping from her, and if she really knew him as well as she thought she did.

_"Should I choose the smoothest course, steady as the beating drum? Should I marry Kokoum? Is all my dreaming at an end?"_

Jane sighed, scratching out the equation she'd screwed up in her distraction and started over. These values weren't right, they couldn't be, but her math wasn't wrong. Unless there was a flaw in the data set, the readings, something wrong with the sensors…

_"Or do you still wait for me, dream giver? Just around the river bend…"_

"You're singing. You never sing," Erik observed her as he was pulling on his jacket. He'd been coming by her lab as frequently as his schedule would allow, checking in or her and help her out now that she was down one intern. It was currently past eight, and Jane was still eyebrow deep in the calculations for the latest data set they'd collected. "What's wrong, Jane?"

"I can't get these values to balance," she muttered distractedly, scribbling a set of coordinates on a piece of scratch paper beside her with one hand while scrolling through the list on the computer screen with the other. "Why aren't they balancing?"

"That's not what I mean." Erik sighed and put his hand over hers, stilling it. She looked at it for a moment, then up into the familiar fatherly lines of his face, confused. "You've been working like a demon for weeks."

"Yeah…" she said, wary and defensive. "And look how it's paid off."

"Oh, it's been astonishing!" he agreed, looking around at instruments littered around the lab and the charts pinned to the walls. "You're in unprecedented territory. I'm not disputing that. But I know you. And even at your most voracious you've never been so _frantic. _You're acting like you've got the hounds of hell snapping at your heels." He pursed his lips, and the concern on his face pricked her conscience. He studied her face for a long moment. "What are you running from Jane?"

It was like Erik had flipped a switch in her brain that she'd been very carefully avoiding until that moment. Her mind overflowed with memories Loki in the garden, of them playing games, talking, joking, snapping at each other, catching him cheating, losing, winning… his smile, his charm, his elegant hands, his easy, graceful stride, his sarcasm and irreverence, his stories, his bright, sly emerald eyes flashing at her with knowing and mischief…

Her chest tightened with an almost overwhelming ache.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she replied, sounding choked to her own ears. She swallowed, and her voice sounded more normal when she continued. "I just don't want to waste any time, Erik. We're… only mortal, after all."

That was true enough. If a method of prolonging life, like the golden apples in her dream, existed on Asgard, surely Thor would have told her about it. Compared with the countless centuries that still stretched out before him, her life seemed almost tragically brief, barely a blip on the timeline. She had no time to waste.

Even so, she couldn't look Erik in the eye for very long. Yes, it was true. But it wasn't _the truth_. The truth was something she could barely understand herself.

Fresh guilt welled through her. She knew exactly what it felt like to see a loved one keeping secrets, wanting to know what was wrong and being brushed aside with platitudes and excuses. Was she treating Erik the way Thor had been treating her? The thought made her feel sick – and irrationally increased her anger with Thor.

Erik sighed. "You can tell me anything, Jane," he told her as he turned to go. "When you're ready to talk about it, I'll be here."

After he was gone, Jane sat for a long time, her calculations forgotten. She had been on the point of telling him all about her dreams, and what they were coming to mean to her. But how did she explain to Erik that she had been dreaming nightly of the man that had broken his mind? How did she explain to him that she was growing to care a frightening amount about a mental invention of the alien invader who had tried to conquer the planet? How did she explain that she had to keep her head filled with gravitational readings to keep from thinking constantly about her boyfriend's dead brother?

And how did she admit any of this to herself, she wondered, without believing she was losing her mind?

.

* * *

The very next day, completely out of the blue, Thor brought up marriage for the first time. She would always wonder if Erik had talked him into it, and any guilt she felt at keeping him in the dark was gratifyingly mediated whenever she thought of it. That was the only good that came of the encounter.

"We should be joined by the customs of your world, before we are handfasted on Asgard," he said decisively. "I do not know your customs. How many hours do you require to prepare?"

"I… wait, prepare for what?"

"Marriage."

Stunned, Jane did the one thing she shouldn't have done, and panicked.

"Thor… I'm… I'm flattered… I mean, happy… I mean, of course I am, but I mean, we've never talked about… I can't just… I mean, you never mentioned…"

"What is the matter?" he asked her, seeming genuinely puzzled. "It will take more than a few hours?"

"No, that's not… I mean, yes, it does, it generally takes a few months… er, well, I mean, it can be done quickly, like in Vegas or something, but that's not really considered… why are you bringing this up _now_?"

The last question, for some reason, mercifully seemed to bounce the ball back into Thor's court, because his posture became defensive the instant it was out of her mouth.

"Why _not _now? Now is as good a time as any. And life is uncertain, Jane. Why wait?"

"I can't… we can't just… jeez, Thor! You didn't even propose!"

"Propose?"

"You didn't even ask me to marry you!"

"I just did!"

"Not…" She almost said _not in the right way, _but she stopped herself. That wasn't the issue here. She had to be clear. "This isn't the time for this Thor."

Thor stared at her perplexed for a long moment, then shook his head.

"I want to make a life with you Jane," he told her, smiling at her so tenderly that the stab of guilt was almost physically painful.

Guilt. Because while she had plenty of reasons for her reluctance to marry him yet – their lack of communication, the secrets he kept from her, the difference in their life spans – the inescapable truth was that her affection was beginning to be divided. Between the real and amazing man in front of her. And a dream of a dead man.

It wasn't like she was cheating on him; how could she cheat on him with her own mind? That didn't change the fact that she felt like scum for caring about another man, even imaginary one, as much as this warm, brave, wonderful man in front of her.

"I want that too," she said. And she meant it. Or rather, she _wanted_ to mean it. "But… look, I don't know what its like on Asgard, but this is a big step for humans. I need some time."

He'd grudgingly accepted her answer. That time.

.

* * *

After that, though it left her with a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach to do it, Jane resolved to try to understand and satisfy her own subconscious and stem her recurring dream. If she stopped dreaming of something impossible, maybe Thor would go back to being the man of her dreams.

She wasted a whole day wandering around the Hampton Court Hedgemaze. She took to buying roses for the apartment. She spent at least an hour each day playing video poker, solitaire, and mah jong on her computer. She dug out her old copy of _Alice in Wonderland _to re-read. And each night after dinner she would pull out her box of Disney movies and watch one of them before bed.

_Something_ should have satisfied at least one or two of the unmet unconscious needs that fueled the dreams, changed them somehow, however slightly.

Nothing worked. Every day Thor grew more impatient, and every night, Loki was there waiting for her in the Red Queen's Garden, and in spite of her guilt, she couldn't bring herself to be unhappy to see him. He was a master at making her forget her cares, always challenging her, frustrating her, fascinating her, and making her smile. He could make her want to scream and tear out her hair, or he could make her laugh until her sides hurt. And, to her shock, sometimes he could even be solicitous and kind.

This was never more evident than when he had found her crying in the garden one night.

"I never knew you were so inconsistent, Jane," Thor had said earlier in the evening, before leaving for Manhattan, even though he didn't need to be there until the next day.

The bitter comment had struck her right in the center of her guilt, and when the dream garden materialized around her, she'd been kneeling beside the singing flowers, sniffling miserably.

Loki was just suddenly there, his shadow falling over her as he crouched down and folded his hands around her shoulders.

"Jane," he said quietly. "Tell me what is wrong."

Jane cleared her throat and wiped furtively at her tears, keeping her eyes pointed stubbornly at the flowerbed. She couldn't tell him: she was refusing to marry a real man because she couldn't get him out of her head. There was no way she was going to embarrass herself that way, and if she were being honest with herself, she couldn't bear the idea of ruining the friendship they had developed by expressing unwelcome feelings - which was ridiculous, since it was a _dream_.

"Come now," he coaxed her, taking her hand and helping her to her feet. He turned her so that she was facing him, and rested his hands on her arms, so that she couldn't turn away. "Do not make me ask again."

The words were commanding, but his tone was gentle, and faltered as though with uncertainty. The tone didn't fit him; Loki was never uncertain. Unable to deny him, she settled for part of the truth.

"It's nothing, really, just… Thor was angry with me, and he said some things that... kind of hurt…" She shrugged, a stubborn blush rising to her cheeks as she realized how close they were standing.

Loki didn't respond right away, but his fingers tightened almost painfully on her arms. When she could no longer stand the silence, she glanced up at him.

Jane had forgotten how menacing Loki looked when his face became dark and intense with anger. She very nearly shrank from him in fear before she made herself understand that he wasn't angry with her.

It was the first time either of them had mentioned Thor since Loki had spoken his name as part of the story of the hidden valley. His name was taboo here. She should have remembered that, but curiously, she no longer felt the almost physical urge to avoid it as she once had. Had the rules of the dream changed again without her realizing?

Loki seemed to notice her trepidation a moment later, because he made a visible effort to pull himself out of whatever ugly emotion had subsumed him.

"Thor has a long-standing habit of saying and doing whatever he pleases without troubling his brain about it first," he said, the edge of a sneer still sharpening his voice. "You mustn't let him get in the habit of it with you. He is like a dog, he needs to be trained."

Jane wanted to defend Thor, to say that it hadn't been unprovoked, that it really was her fault. She wanted to be a dutiful girlfriend, and stand up for her man.

But she didn't want to alienate Loki either. And she was forced to realize that she wanted to keep Loki talking to her at least as much she wanted to defend Thor.

Her heart squeezed longingly in her chest. Maybe it actually _was_ possible to cheat on someone with one's own mind…

Her head bowed again, and she gasped to feel his fingers under her chin, tracing her jaw and gently lifting her face. She looked up at him, and he tried to smile at her, though it looked forced, and after a moment, he gave up.

"Don't cry," he said quietly. He wiped a tear from her cheek with the pad of his thumb. "Just… don't cry…"

He was so close, his fingers cool against the deepening blush on her cheek. Jane forgot how to breathe.

Loki suddenly blinked rapidly a few times, as though he were coming out of a trance, and seemed to shake himself internally. An instant later he stepped back, and Jane was assaulted with the loss of his nearness. Turning away, he pulled her along with him towards the game table, where a Candyland board had materialized. He wouldn't look at her. He looked down at the new board instead.

"Teach me to play," he insisted brusquely.

Over the ensuing hours, his demeanor softened, and he encouraged her to tell him about playing it as a child. Then he proceeded to make up fantastical back stories for each of the Candyland characters, embroiling them in political intrigues, forbidden romances and all sorts of hilarious misadventures. By the time they had played three rounds, Jane was smiling and laughing with him, her guilt and pain and confusion nothing more than a distant echo.

Watching him flick the spinner with narrowed eyes as he concentrated on hiding the green sparks of magic that he used to control where it would land, Jane felt her chest constrict even more tightly, spreading sweetly painful little sparks of electricity through her blood to sting her all over with aching pangs of longing.

That was the first time she could put a name to what Loki made her feel. It was tragically impossible. Because he was a dream. Nevertheless, she knew what this was called.

_Love._

.

* * *

TBC

.

* * *

**A/n: ** More to come shortly!


	5. Sing For Me

**Disclaimer: **I still own nothing, and I wouldn't tell you if I did... I'm barely claiming this fic at all. Not for sale or profit!

**A/n: **So here's the rest of the chapter! At this point, the story has returned to where it started in the prologue! Aaaaaand this is where I lose about 75% of you to the weird workings of my imagination - but honestly, I couldn't resist. Just remember, it's a dream; _"A man cannot be held responsible for what his mind does while he's asleep" -Jean Luc Picard_

.

* * *

_**Chapter 4  
**_

_Sing For Me _

_._

* * *

_"Music expresses that which cannot be said, and on which it is impossible to be silent." -Victor Hugo_

_._

_I need you to sing…  
Sing for me my love  
Sing the right from wrong  
Here inside my mind  
Truth is hard to find  
Sing for me..._

_-Tarja Turunen_

.

* * *

PRESENT DAY

.

* * *

By the time Thor served up his ultimatum – _I love you Jane, but I can't wait forever - _Jane had stopped trying to 'solve' her dreams, though she kept up her new habit of watching Disney movies before bed.

Loki countered her tears in the usual way that night, as he did each time he found her crying, which occurred more and more frequently as Thor became more and more discontented with her stubborn refusals. He effortlessly distracted her out of her bleak mood and lifted her spirits, all the while watching her with intent, unblinking eyes that rarely wavered from their observation of her.

Jane hated herself a little bit for letting him do it. It never solved her problems – in fact it only masked them, and if anything, made them worse. But Jane wouldn't trade those nights for anything. No matter how strange or twisted, no matter how bad it was for her, she couldn't give Loki up. The fact that he was dead, and a figment of her imagination, were purely incidental. These confusingly powerful, yet ultimately very simple feelings were real enough to make up for it. Guilt warred with longing and lost pathetically. It didn't matter how irrational it was; Jane was a scientist, rational was all she knew, and yet she could not reason herself out of this.

These feelings would not be denied. She loved him.

Even so, she could not bring herself to accept them either. How could she hurt Thor by dividing her feelings between him and a fiction from her dreams? She cared about him too much to do that to him, especially after all that he had sacrificed to be with her.

_Guilt. It always comes back to guilt. Thor deserves better._

Unfortunately, all she had to offer him was herself. She wondered how long that would be enough.

.

* * *

"Erik, have you seen these readings?"

She waved him over from where he tinkering with one of the converters that had shorted out. Then, impatient, she picked up the handheld and the stack of printouts and went to him instead.

"Look at this," she insisted, pointing to the outrageously steep spikes on the graph paper. "The gravimetric field strength is fluctuating like crazy. What could drive it that high unless… I don't know. What could do that?"

Erik frowned, studying the graph she thrust into his face.

"Jane, where did these reading come from?"

Jane, who had been chewing diligently on her thumb nail, deep in thought, stilled, then glanced at Erik as though she just realized who she was talking to.

"Jane?" he asked her warningly, the scolding in his tone so much like her memory of her father's that she was powerless against it.

"I… may have… used one of the converters to… put a probe in orbit… a bit…"

"Jane!" Jane winced at his tone. "You don't have clearance!"

Jane snorted. "Now ask me if I care," she retorted. If SHIELD wouldn't approve, she must be doing something right.

"It was one thing to use the converters at random during the Convergence, Jane, there was nothing to lose then, and everything was on the line. But this technology is virtually untested! It could put people at real risk!"

"But it worked, Erik!" she exclaimed plaintively, thwacking the paper with the back of her hand. She hated that she sounded like a little girl begging for her daddy's approval, but she persisted anyway. "The probe arrived exactly at the right coordinates, and totally intact – it's been sending back massive amounts of coded data! I'm so close! A real, functioning Einstein-Rosen bridge! The ability to generate one at will! If I could just incorporate an independent guidance system and figure out what it is that's causing these anomalous readings..."

"Clearly it didn't make it in one piece, if it's sending back results like these," Erik shot back. "Look at them! They're obviously faulty. Jane, this reckless, unstructured experimentation isn't science. It's pure self-satisfaction."

"I…" Jane frowned, surprised and hurt. She hadn't expected Erik to be entirely pleased with her, but she hadn't expected this level of censure either. He wasn't even the least bit excited by her success, and to dismiss the data as faulty without even really examining it…

Jane looked down at the graph so Erik wouldn't see the doubt in her eyes.

Erik was working closely with SHIELD these days. Just like Thor. And she couldn't shake the feeling that she was being lied to. _Just like Thor. _

"You're right," she said quietly. "I'll scrap it."

Erik patted her on the shoulder and sent her back to examine the data gathered by their test generators. And to wonder how many secrets the men in her life were keeping from her.

.

* * *

"_Painting the roses red, we're painting the roses red! We dare not stop, or waste a drop, so let the paint be spread…"  
_

"It's not enough that you have to paint them," Loki observed petulantly from where he lay beside her in the grass, concentrating furiously on a solving a Rubix cube, "now you're making up songs about it?"

Jane cocked an eyebrow and glanced down at him. He didn't look at her, but the slight upturn of his lips told her that he knew he was successfully needling her.

Jane, guided by the rules of the dream, felt compelled to paint the roses, while Loki only wanted to play games. He'd decided to make a game of hanging around and annoying her each night until she finally gave up and allowed herself to be dragged off to play. It was a game for her too, to see how long she could hold out before he could entice her into giving him his way.

But she really did feel the need to paint the roses. She gravitated towards them constantly; when she wasn't directly preoccupied with something else, her feet always carried her to the topiaries or the wall of the hedge, where a paint can always waited under the heavy-headed white roses that begged for color.

They really should be red, said the dream. That was that.

"I didn't actually make it up," Jane informed him archly, dipping her brush and into the paint can, which never seemed to need replenishing, and bending over the rose, which, frustratingly, never seemed to stop showing white, no matter how long she dabbed it. Dreams could be annoyingly nonsensical. "It's from _Alice in Wonderland_. Disney made a movie out of it. They wrote it, I was just singing it."

"Well, let's hear it," Loki insisted. He was still fussing with the cube, but suddenly, she couldn't help but feel that his whole attention was on her. "It's so damnably appropriate to this nonsense. You may as well sing it again."

Jane felt it – the compulsion of the dream, stronger this time. For a song. She had felt it once before, when he brought up his musical education, and it had been insistent then. Now it was nearly overpowering.

"I think not," Jane replied stubbornly, fighting the dream and echoing Loki's words from that first conversation, when he refused to sing for her. "It's a silly song. I wouldn't want to bore you."

Loki turned away from his game long enough to scowl at her, and she gave him a pointed look, to which he rolled his eyes, before turning back to his game. They sat in companionable silence for a long moment.

"I want to hear it," Loki murmured quietly.

Her hand stilled at the seriousness of his tone. She felt again, as before, that there was a double meaning to his words; there was more weight in them than their meaning should be able to carry.

What was he really saying?

For a while she could only let that awareness wash over her, feeling, irrationally, as though she were standing on a sheer ledge, about to jump into something far more significant than a silly song.

Silence reigned. Then she sighed and relented.

"_Painting the roses red, we're painting the roses red! We dare not stop or waste a drop, so let the paint be spread! We're painting the roses red! We're painting the roses red!_"

Jane kept her face turned squarely towards the half-painted rose, kept her brush moving rhythmically as she sang, but she could feel his eyes on her.

"_Oh, painting the roses red, and many a tear we shed, because we know they'll cease to grow, in fact, they'll soon be dead! And yet we go ahead, painting the roses red!"_

Her face, brighter red than the paint at the untrained quality of her voice, only grew redder with every note she dropped. But now that she was singing, she couldn't seem to make herself stop. The song was embarrassing, but the singing… it felt too right to be wrong. _Stupid dreams… _She sang on.

"_Painting the roses red, we're painting the roses red! Oh, pardon me, but Mister Three, why must you paint them red?"_

It was embarrassing... but it was just a song, damn it.

"_The Queen she likes 'em red. If she saw white instead, she'd raise a fuss and each of us would quickly lose his head! Since this is the part we dread, we're painting the roses red!"_

And besides, she had an ulterior motive.

"_Painting the roses red, we're painting the roses red! Don't tell the Queen what you have seen or say that's what we said. But we're painting the roses red, yes, painting the roses red! Not pink, not green, not aquamarine! We're painting the roses red!"_

Done at last Jane fell silent, and finally worked up the courage to look defiantly over at her silent audience. Loki had rolled over onto his belly and was watching her with a look of horrified fascination.

Then he burst into laughter. Jane felt her eyes narrow, even as she felt the corners of her mouth trying to curl upwards against her will.

"By the Norns! What kind of song is that?"

"A ridiculous one," she answered matter-of-factly. "I said it was."

"I admit it, I underestimated you."

"It's a Disney song," she huffed, coloring again. "It's for children."

"And the Red Queen!" he exclaimed, ignoring her. "Beheadings for planting the wrong flowers," he chuckled, pulling himself up onto his knees beside her. "And they called me a tyrant,"

Loki said it lightly, but the joke seemed to glance off at a wrong angle.

It was the closest either of them had ever come to talking about his… tyranny.

"Er… um… well, nobody can beat the Red Queen in that department," she assured him, trying to keeping her voice light as well. She hastily switched subjects. "But never mind. It's your turn now."

He cocked a wary eyebrow at her. "My turn for what?"

"To sing," she informed him pointedly, unable to keep a grin from spreading across her face at his look of surprise. "I told you, remember? I'd sing for you if you'd sing for me. I held up my end. Now your turn. I want to hear a song. Pay up!"

"If I recall correctly," Loki replied slowly, clearly not ready to give in, "my exact reply to your proposal was 'I think not'. Do you know, I think for once I'll stand by my word. A man should be honest once in a while, if only to keep people off their guard."

Jane huffed and rolled her eyes, turning back to her painting. But she felt it again, the pull of the dream's compulsion, and on top of that a genuine disappointment. She didn't know which was stronger.

The roses should be red.

And Loki should sing to her.

"I… want to hear it," she murmured, throwing his words back at him, her voice heavy, and suddenly, she thought she understood some of the earlier weight in Loki's voice.

He went very still beside her, and she felt his eyes on her again. There was quiet for a long time, the only sound the modulating hum of the flower beds.

Then, reluctantly he began to sing. At first he hummed out a tune, deep and rhythmic, like a drum beat given in rising and falling musical tones. Then he added words. He was right, he didn't have a particular talent for singing. But it wasn't the delivery of the song that made it remarkable to listen to – it was the person who sang it.

And listening to Loki sing was indeed remarkable.

She didn't know the language; it didn't sound even vaguely familiar. But it was lilting and beautiful, and the syllables rose and fell with the melody in enchanting ways, so that soon, she had set aside her paintbrush and was tapping her fingers in time against her knee. She turned to watch him as he sang the last verse, and was pleased to find that he was indeed capable of blushing.

The song ended, and he instantly had the Rubix cube in his hand again, hunching over it and scowling.

"Happy now?" he snapped. His face didn't get any less red. It was, Jane mused, extremely adorable. A helpless smile stretched across her face.

"Yes," she said honestly, and he glanced up at her through the fall of his hair, then back down again. "It was beautiful. What's it about?"

An echo of her smile pulled at his mouth. "It's a children's song about hunting bilge snipes."

Jane laughed out loud at that, recalling a description she'd once heard of the creatures, and the sound of her laughter seemed to pull the man beside her out of his determined humiliation.

.

* * *

"So I believe it is your turn," Loki said, giving her a sidelong look

"Oh no you don't!" Jane chuckled, shaking her head. "You got your payment in advance."

Loki made a rude face, then smirked at her. "Come now, don't be coy, Jane. Let's hear another."

Jane felt the pull of his request in her gut. From the way Loki was drumming his fingers against his knee, she was willing to bet he felt it too. The rules were changed. The dream wanted this to happen. But...

Something other than embarrassment stopped her from complying. There was a current in the air that felt... off, somehow It was strong... a counter-compulsion? It said to her, very clearly, _wait. _

So she waited, unmoved. When she had refused to respond for more than a minute, Loki smacked his leg and huffed in annoyance, narrowing his eyes in frustration.

"Stubborn humans…" he muttered. "You never do as you're told, do you?" When Jane glanced sharply at him, he smirked at her; it was the same expression he'd shown her a hundred times before, but this time there was coldness in it, a cutting edge honed by her denial that stained his voice when he spoke again and sent a chill down her spine. "Come now, Jane, you mustn't be so obstinate. I want to laugh at more of these ridiculous rhymes by your great bard, Disney. The best that Midgard has to offer, no doubt."

Jane blinked, drawing back infinitesimally from the acid in his voice. She looked away.

She should take it as a joke, a meaningless jibe, just banter between friends. Her stomach twisted as the current in the air intensified, sharpening against her senses.

It wasn't meaningless. No matter how they amicably they interacted now, this man, in life, had tried to enslave her people because he believed that humanity was an inferior race. He had believed he had a right to do with others as he pleased, just because he wanted it. She didn't want to fight with him, didn't want him to think badly of her… but what did it matter, if he really felt that way about humans?

_It's a dream. He's not real. It doesn't matter._

But it did matter. He was real enough to affect her waking life, and real enough for her to feel a sickening knot in the pit of her stomach to think that he saw her as something fundamentally inferior. He was real enough to her.

And she knew that if she didn't speak about this now, it would poison everything hereafter. She needed to have enough pride and self-worth to stand up for herself. She needed to prove, to him and to herself, that even if she was just a limited, mortal human being, a tiny blip on the timeline that would barely have time to realize it was alive before it died, she was _still_ worth something.

If Loki saw her as an inferior, she had to show him that she was his equal.

Loki had stilled and was watching her with a wary silence. His demanding mood seemed to have evaporated at the sight of her reaction, and he was clearly trying to read what was going through her head, and failing. He did not seem to like the look on her face.

"Jane…?"

"A song," she interrupted him, glancing sharply at him. His jaw snapped shut, and the look of surprise on his face would have made her laugh if she wasn't so incensed and conflicted. "Sure, I'll sing you one. You might think its _ridiculous_, but its one of my favorites."

She picked up her paintbrush again, refusing to look at him out of both anger and fear, and, all defiance, she began to sing.

"_You think I'm an ignorant savage. And you've been so many places, I guess it must be so. But still I cannot see, if the savage one is me, how can there be so much that you don't know? You don't know…"_

She risked a glance out of the corner of her eye. Loki was sitting up, ramrod straight – it was clear the message was being heard. His face was grim, a cold, emotionless mask with a newly smoldering coal of anger in his eyes. But he sat still and listened.

"_You think you own whatever land you land on, the Earth is just a dead thing you can claim, but I know every rock and tree and creature has a life, has a spirit, has a name. You think the only people who are people, are the people who look and think like you. But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you'll learn things you never knew you never knew…_"

He listened to her sing, and when Jane glanced at him again, she felt a kind of tingling relief to see that the smolder had banked in his expression. His posture was still rigid, but his eyes were downcast and sullenly thoughtful, the brow above them troubled. She knew he was still listening though, because he glanced up at her, catching her eye. She held his gaze for a long moment, then turned back to the rose in front of her as she went into the last chorus of the song.

"…_And you'll never hear the wolf cry to the Blue Corn Moon, for whether we are white or copper skinned, we need to sing with all the voices of the mountain, we need to paint with all the colors of the wind..."_

Lowering her brush, she turned her head fully in his direction, and though her head swam with her own daring, she made herself face him as she finished.

_"You can own the Earth and still, all you'll own is earth until you can paint with all the colors of the wind."_

He was staring at her hard, his eyes narrowed, his mouth a tight line. He looked offended. Mulish. Stubborn.

It irritated her.

"That was from a Disney movie called Pocahontas. About invaders and natives learning to get alone. The moral of that story was that we're all more alike than different. Whether our skin is white or bronze." She turned picked up the brush again and went back to her painting. And, with more trepidation than she'd felt even when she'd cowered at Malekith's feet on Svartalfheim, she muttered, "Or blue."

She heard the breath gust out of him in a rush, as though she'd physically punched him in the gut, instead of just verbally. She kept painting. _It's a dream,_ she reminded herself as the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. _Just a dream. _

He was breathing too loudly. Her animal brain was working itself into a panic. It was fervently suggesting that she _run now._

_Just a dream… _

Dream or not, that blow had been below the belt and she knew it. Thor had mentioned once, during their time together on Asgard, that Loki was adopted, that he was a Frost Giant from Jotunheim, and learning of it was the thing that had first driven him to… _extremes_. So she knew she hadn't beat around the bush; she'd carefully and deliberately pulled out the rawest of his raw nerves and stomped on it.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Now, as he rose to his feet to loom like the Sword of Damocles above her, she was beginning to have doubts about the wisdom of her rash decision.

_It's just a dream, just a dream, just a dream…_

She should have just slapped him and been done with it. That had gone over well before.

She could feel his eyes on her. Angry eyes glaring down on her from above. High above. Looking down on her.

The riot in her mind quieted. It condensed around the one all important point of this confrontation: dream or not, this was _not _just a dream. She was doing this to prove that despite her weak will and confused emotions, she still had some pride and self-possession. She was _not_ inferior.

Calmly, she placed the brush back the paint can, rested he hands on her knees, and turned her head, craning her neck so that she could look up into his face.

Rage. His teeth were clenched and bared, his chest was heaving and his fists were balled so tight they shook. His eyes were wide, livid green maelstroms of pure fury, demanding to know, how dare she? Puny, insignificant mortal beast, how dare she presume to speak of that? How _dare_ she! Even without his armor, he looked every inch the vengeful conquering god-king.

And every few seconds, those wrathful eyes flashed the murderous blood red of a Frost Giant's.

Raw animal terror washed through Jane's system for an instant, freezing her into the absolute stillness, a mouse frozen in the hawk's shadow. But it was followed almost immediately by an utterly irrational calm, as though the fear center of her brain had perhaps overloaded and burnt out. She met his anger steadily, and her eyes asked in return what her voice dared not – what would he do now? Would he dominate, punish and destroy her for displeasing him? Would he prove himself a savage by conquering her for speaking her mind?

Or was she right to have faith in him?

She didn't move an inch under the wordless onslaught of his emotions, and when he didn't move to act upon them, her heart grew light as she found a name for her calm.

_Oh, I see... _she hadn't recognized it at first; it wasn't, she realized with some consternation, something she was used to feeling.

It wasn't a loss of fear.

It was trust.

Slowly, she turned away from him, fished her brush out of the paint can, and focused her attention carefully back to the flower before her. She was pleasantly surprised to see it was nearly finished – she'd been painting it for so long without making any progress, she'd been certain it would never turn red. Encouraged by the progress, she went back to dabbing at it, and left Loki to seethe beside her.

She was aware of his position relative to her at all times as he turned with a wordless snarl and began pacing in a semicircle around her like a caged tiger, his breathing uneven, sometimes drawing in suddenly as though he were going to say something, but the words never came. This went on for sometime. Eventually his breathing quieted to a normal volume. But still he paced.

Jane went on painting. There was only a little bit of white left. It was filling in so quickly now. Maybe she'd finally finish this one tonight.

Loki growled low in his throat and threw his back against the hedge wall, making the roses shiver, crossing his arms stubbornly across his chest. As Jane laid the final stroke and lowered her brush to smile with an incongruous sense of accomplishment at the blood red rose – _the color of his eyes; his real eyes _– he began, in a low, angry tone, to sing.

_Fair is fair,_ Jane thought. It was, in retrospect, the only appropriate way for him to answer her, no matter how surreal it seemed. _It's a dream, after all..._

This song wasn't enchanting. Though she didn't understand the words any more than she had the first, the melody and syllables were harsh, driving, cruel, and spoke to her of bitter cold and violence. She shivered as she listened, tempted to cower before the deadly strokes the melody promised to all who stood before it.

As the last syllable died on his lips, he bent his knees and slid slowly down the rough wall of greenery until he sat directly beside the red rose, almost directly opposite her. His leg brushed hers. She didn't pull away. All the fight seemed to have gone out of him. He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it in disarray, then brought it back down to scrub wearily at his face, before bracing his forehead against it, leaving his head bowed as though he just couldn't be bothered to be enraged or put up appearances anymore.

Jane watched him for a moment, her heart aching for him now that she'd proven to herself that her spine was still intact. It was clear that he was in pain, even though she didn't understand it; not a sharp, immediate pain, but old ache that wore on him.

"That was a... _powerful_ song," she commented carefully, keeping her voice neutral. "What was it about?"

"Going into battle to slaughter Frost Giant _savages_," he said, his voice dead-pan. Jane tensed at the admission. Why would he…? "One of my favorites from when I was a boy. My _father _taught it to me."

The bitterness in his voice stabbed deep into Jane's chest, twisting as the absolute wrongness of his disgust clashed with the reality of what he was. Suddenly there was a reference point from which to view his seemingly directionless rage. She closed her eyes as a shiver wracked her frame, and though she couldn't condone what he'd done in anger, she thought she could finally see something like the full extent of its origin.

He had been raised in hatred of Frost Giants, fed on it with his mother's milk, trained since he could hold a blade to act on it. And for over a thousand years, it had grown in him, as much a part of him as his bones. To breathe was to hate the Frost Giants.

And then he had discovered that he _was _a Frost Giant.

No wonder he had hated everyone and everything around him so viciously.

He hated himself most of all.

Jane wanted to cry with the pain she felt for him. But she couldn't bear to be that selfish, when she was the one who'd forced the issue and brought the pain to the surface. Instead, she clambered to her feet and moved around to sink down beside him. He tensed slightly, and she felt him watching her from the shadow of his hand, suddenly as wary of her as she had been of him a moment before, though she could scarcely believe she had as much power to hurt him as he had to hurt her.

She sat shoulder to shoulder with him, looking out at the garden, wondering what to say or do. There were new games shimmering into existence every few moments, more than ever before, as though the dream were trying to give them an out, let them sweep this pain under the rug like they had done with so many others, and go back to laughing things off and ignoring them. The easy way out; back the way they had just come.

But Jane couldn't. It was too late for that. An old wound had been ripped wide open, and Jane couldn't just let it bleed.

Instead, impulsively, she decided that there was, of course, only way to answer him.

Slowly, giving him time to pull away, she leaned in and pressed herself against his side, tilting her head down to rest on his shoulder. It was tense enough to feel like rock. But he didn't move away.

"_When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are, anything your heart desires will come to you…"_

It was something of a strain to sing with her head at that angle, and it made her voice high and quiet. But she refused to relinquish even one point of contact. And she was gratified, within the first few notes of her song, to feel a shudder pass through him, and the furious, agonized, humiliated tension begin to flow out of him.

"_If your heart is in your dreams, no request is too extreme, when you wish upon a star, as dreamers do…"_

The dream liked it – she could feel it. You could say so much more with a song than with just words. And she felt sure that Loki could hear what she was really trying to convey.

"_Like a bolt out of the blue, fate steps in and sees you through. When you wish upon a star, your dreams come true."_

She felt his head bow as his shoulders began to shake with more than just tremors. He was completely silent, but she was certain with a surreal, dreamlike knowing, that he was crying. She didn't look at him. Instead, she reached out to where one of his hands lay against his leg and wrapped it securely in her own. After a still, tense moment, he turned it and returned her grasp, gripping her hand like it was a lifeline. His bowed head turned so that his cheek was pressed against her scalp, and a harsh breath sighed out between his lips to stir, hot against her hair. She closed her eyes against the bittersweet ache in her chest, reveling in his closeness, wishing futilely in that moment that she could stay here beside him, hand in hand, forever.

They sat like that for a long time, recognizing the pain they had caused each other – she, the mortal human who feared herself inferior in truth as well as opinion because she would die in the blink of an Asgardian eye; the the Frost Giant raised to hate Frost Giants as only the Aesir could – and, healing something in that mutual recognition, found comfort in each other's bared vulnerability.

It didn't solve anything; it didn't absolve any wrong doing, lessen regrets or make any of their problems go away. None of their burdens were decreased. But somehow, sharing them made them more bearable.

The moment seemed to last an eternity, and was then over all too quickly.

Loki sniffed, then raised his head to rest it against the greenery behind them.

"Teach me to play Go Fish," he said quietly, the calm, evenly delivered words seeming somehow too loud and out of place after wake of so much emotion. "You promised you would when you finished. Remember?"

Jane sighed, stirring herself from the inside out, and nodded against his shoulder, then somehow made herself let go of his hand. They climbed to their feet, and she led him to the game table, where the deck of cards waited for them.

It was quiet and awkward. Loki alternated between watching her with wide, wary eyes, as though he'd never seen her before, and staring fixedly at the table between them. Jane despaired that she really had well and truly ruined everything.

But they had to talk for Loki to learn the game. And five minutes later, they were able to look at each other when they spoke without muttering and looking away in embarrassment. Fifteen minutes after that, the first tentative smile was exchanged. And half an hour later, they found themselves able to laugh again, albeit rather quietly at first.

Soon their spirits were back on an even keel, perhaps not quite as carefree as before, but what they'd lost in exuberance, they'd made up in understanding. The ground between them was still rough and uneven, the footing uncertain after such a massive upheaval, but it was, Jane thought, more solid than it had ever been before.

And at least one rose on the wall of the garden was now blooming bright red.

.

* * *

TBC

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* * *

**A/n: **Yeah, that's right, Jane delivered moral lessons through Disney songs! *peeks out from under rock and shakes fist at the heavens* I regret nothing! *crawls back under rock* Plus it serves a purpose - after all up until now they've just been playing games. But music pulls at the heart, heals old wounds and makes you face the truth - maybe its time for the dream to move them deeper? _"Music doesn't lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music." -Jimi Hendrix_ (Yes, I am, in fact, trying to justify my own insanity. Is it working?)

Also - anyone have a new theory as to what the roses represent? Two reviewers came very, VERY close last time I asked; it should be a little clearer now.

If anyone's still reading, thanks for sticking with it! In blatant defiance of every law of nature and good taste, more to come soon!


	6. It's My Life

**Disclaimer: **The plot and characters of the MCU belong to somebody else; this story is not for sale or profit.

**A/n: **Sorry to be gone so long. Bet you thought the muse had killed me and hid my body in the liquor cabinet. But contrary to popular belief, I'm not actually dead (yet), just mildly enslaved to the mindless, arbitrary rules of society that say you have to earn money if you want fancy things like food and electricity... but definitely not dead (I think). And just to prove it (mostly to myself), why, look, it's another chapter! Please enjoy ^^

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* * *

_**Chapter 5**_

_It's My Life  
_

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* * *

_This ain't a song for the broken-hearted  
No silent prayer for faith-departed;  
Tomorrow's getting harder, make no mistake  
Luck ain't even lucky, gotta make your own breaks.  
_

_It's my life! And it's now or never!  
I ain't gonna live forever!  
I just wanna live while I'm alive…_  
'_Cause, it's my life!_

_-Bon Jovi_

.

* * *

Jane woke alone in her bed in a state of surreal disequilibrium. Memories of last night's dream raced around the inside of her head like buzzing bees, darting back and forth from mirth to fury to sorrow to such bittersweet understanding that she could barely bear to recall it.

She didn't know quite when it had happened, but Loki was so real to her now. Jane found herself smiling up at the ceiling as tears trickled from the corners of her eyes. She was on dangerous ground, because he was in danger of growing more real to her than the real people in her daily life. The warm glow in her chest swiftly gave way to a hollow ache.

She missed him already, and he wasn't even real.

Shuddering out a sigh, she rolled over and hugged her pillow tight, as though she could stuff it into her chest and fill the rapidly spreading void inside that the prince in her dreams had unintentionally carved out, and would never be there to fill.

"I'm certifiable," Jane whispered miserably. She buried her face in the soft cotton of her pillowcase to block out the unwelcome light of day. "Why can't you be real?"

.

* * *

Jane knew she was awake. But for a moment, as she walked into her lab later that day, she was sure she was still asleep. And having a nightmare.

It was an old nightmare. A familiar one. One that had haunted her ever since that day in New Mexico, feeding her fear and distrust of SHIELD. The nightmare of some faceless bureaucrat turning his thumb down from the shadows and ordering her life's work confiscated yet again. And as though her guilt and undeserved joy from earlier had summoned them to even the score, here was SHIELD, a dozen intentionally forgettable men and women in nondescript black suits and sunglasses, cold, intimidating, implacable as robots.

They had swarmed the premises and were ransacking her lab. Again.

The first time she had raged and fought against it, Erik's steady presence the only thing that kept her from getting herself arrested. She might have done so again, had it not been for the sight in front of her, which made even the black suits and sunglasses that she so desperately loathed seem completely unimportant.

_Thor._

He stood there, a wash of bright red and gleaming Asgardian gold, smack in the middle of her lab amongst the scurrying, black-suited worker bees. His brow furrowed and his shoulders slumped with some heavy emotion, but he seemed otherwise untroubled as he _directed _them to take this file, be careful with that piece of equipment, check behind the cabinet over there because she had grown adept at hiding important pieces of data…

Thor, who saw stealing as dishonor, who had braved a complex full of highly trained government operatives just to return her journal to her, the man who was now her lover, who had just three days ago had proposed to her…

…was now giving those very same government operatives tips on how to find her hidden data stashes while he helped them haul away her equipment.

It was the most surreal sight she'd ever seen – and that was saying something.

The room started to go hazy, and she realized she'd stopped breathing. She sucked in a loud breath, surprised to find that her lungs hurt. Thor turned at the sound, and when his eyes found her, they slid closed for an instant, his face twisting with the same kind of guilty agony she'd been feeling about Thor ever since she realized that she cared more than she should about Loki.

It appeared she wasn't the only one sleeping with the enemy, so to speak.

"Jane…" he said cautiously she walked farther into the lab, blinking around at the bareness as two of the SHIELD drones maneuvered past her, carefully carting one of her early gravimetric field generator prototypes between them. She was too stunned to even put up a pretense of stopping them. "I know how this must seem," he prefaced hurriedly, "but it really is…"

"It _seems_ like you're stealing my stuff," she said faintly, still staring around herself in wide-eyed disbelief, too shocked to feel anything. Too shocked to feel the pain of betrayal that was surely coming. "Is this a… a punishment? For…"

She couldn't say it – _a punishment for not marrying you _\- but she didn't have to. Thor's eyes widened, aghast.

"You cannot seriously believe…"

A disbelieving little laugh huffed out of her, cutting off his words. The room spun again, and she raised her hands to balance herself. They impacted his chest and she discovered, to her surprise, that somewhere between lifting and landing, the motion had gained a measure of force, and she had begun hitting him.

It felt wonderful and horrible, pounding her tiny, useless little fists against his armor like a bumble bee bouncing again and again against a window pane.

He grabbed her wrists, gently but firmly, arresting her movement. She knew, distantly, that it was to stop her from hurting herself, not him.

"Jane! Jane, please… Please, be still. Please listen! I asked to be the one to lead this team. So that I could be the one to… to try to help you understand… But I never would have… if you could think…"

Jane made a noise somewhere between a moan and a growl at the back of her throat and wrenched out of his grasp; the fact that he had to be letting her do it only infuriated her more. It tore at her that he was so calm and rational, as though _she _were the one who was out of line.

She stood glaring at a point on his breast plate, panting and blinking too rapidly, for what seemed like a very long time, waiting for the room to stop rocking around like a ship in a storm. When she was calm enough to speak without either screaming or crying, she looked him hard in the eye, and enjoyed the way he winced.

"I never would have believed it," she said in a quiet hiss. "_Never._" This time when he winced, she didn't feel vindicated. It just hurt, all the way around. She felt herself wilt. It was just too much. "I don't suppose your going to tell me why..." It wasn't a question; she already knew the answer.

"I cannot," Thor shook his head, swallowing hard. The grimace on his face said he might like to throw up right now. "I can only tell you that SHIELD is responding to a security threat, and until the danger is past, you must not continue with your present study." The look on her face must have held a lethal mix of disbelief, accusation, and bitter resignation, because Thor couldn't hold her eyes. "Jane please try to understand. I don't want to deprive you of your work. I know how much it means to you. But I have…"

"Sworn," she finished for him, unimpressed. "You have sworn." She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. "How lucky I haven't agreed to marry you. What would you have done if your oath to SHIELD came into conflict with your oath to me?" Some of her vindictive spirit resurfaced when she saw him pale at that.

"Jane… please… I…"

The unfamiliar tone of his pleading struck something deep down in the core of her, beneath the wreckage of the trust he had just finished destroying. She stood looking up at him, and really looked at him: at the strain on his forehead, the grim frown that would never sit right on that face meant only to smile, the dull worry and aching conflict in his normally sparkling eyes.

To her surprise, she felt a swell of pity where she should have been feeling only fury.

"They really have you trapped, don't they?" she said, shaking her head. "Trapped inside your own sense of honor."

Thor looked away and down, unable to meet her eyes.

"I confess, I have begun to have cause to regret my vow of allegiance. Not because I believe the cause unjust… but because…" he looked up at her with longing and regret. "But it was fairly given. Such things are the very heart of my people, Jane. Please… please understand. Please forgive me. Please… just trust me."

Jane could only stare at him in amazement. Trust him? She looked around at her possessions disappearing into the corridor, she supposed into black vans concealed in the shipping bay below the building. Trust?

She briefly considered yelling at him some more. Instead, her shoulders slumped and she walked over to him, went up on her toes, and kissed him gently on the cheek. Somehow she smiled up at him a little when he looked down at her, confused and hopeful, though she couldn't keep the sadness out of her own expression.

"It's not like I have a choice, is it?" she said hollowly. She could tell by the way he cringed that she'd cut him more deeply with her quiet reproach than if she'd actually stabbed him. She probably wasn't being fair. But she was damn sure that he wasn't either. "Lock up when you're are done."

She tried to say something more, tried to leave him an opening to fix this horrible, horrible mistake… tried tell him that she still loved him… but the words stuck in her throat. Right at that moment, she wasn't even sure she knew him.

She left him standing there, so ironically helpless, watching as she walked out the door.

.

* * *

Her lab was situated on the top floor of an office building in downtown London, but today she took the stairs rather than the elevator, needing to feel her feet moving. She made it to the ground floor, out the door, and around the corner before she stopped, hidden in an alley behind a dumpster that smelled like rotten eggs.

Only then did she finally let the burning tears fall. The shock that had kept them frozen at bay seemed to shatter, and all at once she was sobbing into the bricks, cursing incoherently and periodically kicking the wall. The pain was cathartic, grounding her, giving her an anchor, until the last of the tears drained away, leaving her raw and empty.

She stared at the greasy pavement for a long time. Thinking hard.

A slow, slightly bitter smile stretched her lips.

She still felt like screaming and beating the living daylights out of something with a baseball bat. But those emotions were being mediated by a kind of lightness that was washing through the center of her chest where that hard knot of guilt had so long been lodged.

Convoluted as it was, she was almost grateful to Thor for this unspeakable betrayal of trust. It was like it balanced things between them. A sullen weight had lifted off of her shoulders. It was as though he'd freed her from any obligation to be forthright with him. She wondered what would happen between them now; what she wanted to happen next. She was sure she had plenty of time to think about it; she couldn't imagine he would show his face at the flat until her things had been returned. He wouldn't dare.

Taking a deep breath, Jane took stock of her situation.

Her lab had been gutted, her equipment had been confiscated, her life's work pawed through and violated by trained gorillas in black suits. All her phenomenal progress was halted, all that obsessive work for nothing...

Her nearly manic smile widened further and she chuckled darkly under her breath.

Her nightmare had come true. She should have been distraught. But Jane had three things going for her.

First, she was adaptable.

Second, she never made the same mistake twice.

And third, Thor _far_ underestimated the degree of her paranoia when it came to SHIELD and their sticky fingers.

Collecting herself, Jane walked out from behind the dumpster, down the street, and hailed a cab.

.

* * *

She didn't go home right away. Instead, she rode around downtown London until she was calm, slowly sloughing off the layers of resentment and anger and hurt and distrust, resisting the urge to run straight back to her flat, until a condensed, rock-like pit of cool, calm resolve was all that remained. Only then did she give her address and let the cabby take her home. Once inside, she checked to see that the doors and windows were locked and drew the curtains. She made double sure to lock the balcony door; she always left unlocked for Thor. The little latch would be roughly as effective as wet tissue paper at barring his way if he really wanted to come inside… but it was the principle of the thing. There was something fiercely satisfying in the little click as she slid the lock into place.

Finally giving into temptation, she made her way to the utility closet.

Inside she rolled the carpet aside to uncover a maintenance hatch in the floor beside the water heater. It had been sealed shut when Jane found it; the building was old, and when it had been updated to include a water heater in each unit, the narrow service tunnels in the walls had become obsolete. She had carefully worked it loose, and now when she pulled, the rusty metal rose easily, revealing a black little hole in the floor. Pulling a flashlight from where she'd left it on top of the water heater, she carefully lowered herself into the dark square, closing the hatch behind her.

She was a lot smaller than the men who had once worked in these spaces, so it wasn't quite as claustrophobic as it was likely meant to be, but she still had to crawl on her hands and knees to reach the service shaft that dropped down along the inside of the outer wall of the building. She swiftly located the ladder bolted into the wall of the shaft and, stowing the light in her pocket, latched on to the rusty iron rungs and began to descend in total darkness. She counted the rungs carefully, and stepped off onto solid pavement just when she expected to.

Flicking the flashlight back on, she quickly located the hanging bulb dangling from the ceiling nearby and pulled it. It flickered to life and flooded the dingy concrete room with weak yellow light. She found herself in the old boiler room in the subbasement of the building. A tangle of old copper pipes slithered like snakes across the ceiling between the rafters, sprouting from row after row of dusty old boilers, leaving each to look like a fat, indolent octopus clinging to the underside of some great wooden ship. Cobwebs hung heavy between them. It was clear no one had been down here for years.

No one but her.

Waving away the thick motes of dust her passage stirred, she quickly crossed the room to the farthest corner where the shadows between the boilers were the thickest, and shone her light around the corner. A slow, devious smile spread across her face and a thrill of mischief danced up her spine. Maybe she was channeling Loki, just a little.

Mounted on the bare concrete, insulated with rubber and duct tape, a power converter was cut, _very_ illegally, into the building's main power grid. The converter housed a number of small fuse switches, and a master switch. Without fanfare, Jane threw it.

A whirring hum rose as though from the depths to thrum through the old pipes as lights flickered and flashed to life, fluorescent bulbs set into the walls along with the beeping and blipping of computers and equipment booting up. With a contented little sigh, Jane began taking inventory with relish. Five gravitational field generators, two converters, a spare computer, and three external hard drives containing backups of all of the data SHIELD had just taken from her. There were also tools, equipment and copious raw materials for building new machinery if need be.

_Don't get angry, _her mind said. It sounded like Loki. _Get even._

"You're becoming a bad influence," she muttered to the absence of him.

It was not a proper research lab, but it was far better than nothing. Tony Stark's money (which wasn't _technically _stolen, since she was still _technically _using it for its intended purpose) had bought only the best equipment, and it made even these working conditions bearable.

From an old abandoned auto shop in the New Mexico desert to an old boiler room under her London flat. She could work anywhere.

And she would.

SHIELD didn't want her continue her research with the gravity converters. Thor had kept things from her, and betrayed her, at their behest. And she strongly suspected that they had somehow convinced Erik to turn on her as well, and that he might even be the one who had put SHIELD on her scent. They wanted her knowledge and her research, but none of them was going to let her know what was really going on.

Which meant the only possible recourse was to keep digging anyway, and figure it out for herself. She felt rather satisfyingly thrill of defiance as she pulled out the folding chair she'd placed in front of the computer work station and started booting up analysis programs.

Scientific integrity was important. So was curiosity. But this?

This was war.

.

* * *

The intrigues of Jane's waking life had little impact on her time in the garden, but the garden had sprouted new dimensions of its own.

Jane and Loki still played games, and they still talked. More and more they talked about the past, about her work and her theories, about his magic, though Jane still didn't understand it as well as she would like. _Magic is an agreement... _It made no sense, but in some ways it didn't matter what they talked about. They enjoyed each other's companionship in a deeper way now, after their fight. It was a like a wall had come down that day, washed away by her defiance and his capitulation, and the old ghosts they'd both exorcised. When their eyes met, there was a deeper recognition in them, a real intimacy that exists between people who've shared pain.

And now, every night, they sang to each other.

This was a new game all its own, with its own rules that they learned as they went. Near the end of the dream each night, he would ask to hear a song, and she demanded one in return. It became almost a ritual of parting.

It was always Disney songs that came to her at times like these. She liked that they made him smile, and sometimes they made him laugh. She loved it when he laughed. So she stuck to light-hearted melodies, working her way through Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah, Under the Sea, Hakuna Matata, Prince Ali, Bare Necessities, Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo and so on.

After the first few nights, she found that she had another reason for sticking with Disney: more than once, Loki, perplexed by the lyrics of a song, demanded context. And when he did, she would, with immense secret pleasure, give in and tell him the fairytale that went with the song. He would listen with an enigmatic little smirk on his lips from "Once upon a time," to "happily ever after," sometimes interjecting amused comments or sarcastic jokes, but for the most part simply listening with an air of relaxed enjoyment and rapt interest. She knew from her short time on Asgard that storytelling was as large a part of Asgardian culture as battles and oaths, and it was deeply gratifying to be able to keep his attention with the stories she loved.

Once her turn was done, he always held up his end of the bargain. In reverse of her style, he would tell her what the song he was going to sing was about before he sang – often ballads about hunting, battle, magic, ancient kingdoms, epic romance, alien worlds – then sing his song and bring the stories vividly to life. She never understood the words; they were always in alien languages, probably composed in an age before the English language even existed. She didn't care. Some of them were harsh and rhythmic, making her heart pound, others were gentle, coaxing beautiful, and his eyes when he sang them were soft, making her heart pound for a different reason. The sound of his voice, the clear, simple tones, had become a lullaby to her, so that it was the last sound she heard as her dreams faded and dissolved into streams of sunlight and the scent of the roses she now habitually kept on the table by her bedroom window.

Everything would seem to have fallen into a harmonious pattern between them.

Painting the roses, however, became a point of contention.

Jane was more driven than ever to paint the roses red. The brushes she pulled from the paint cans became larger and thicker, letting her paint the broad, fragrant petals much more quickly and effectively. She was slowly working her way through the garden. Loki, on the other hand, was becoming increasingly resistant to her desire to paint them, and frustrated with her when, after each game, she would wander away without really meaning to and find herself back beside the hedge with the dripping red brush between her fingers.

"It's a pointless exercise!" he snapped on more than one occasion as he paced agitatedly around her still, painting form, the winds of a hurricane circling its eye. "What does it matter if they're red? None of this is real, remember? You said so yourself. I am dead, this is a land out of a child's tale, and none of it matters!"

"It matters to me," Jane would reply calmly, turning to pin him with a stare so sincere that he couldn't seem to hold it for more than a moment before he would resume his pacing.

"You're being stupid," he sometimes snarled. "You're acting like a fool. You're going to ruin everything."

Those words should have slashed her open from the inside out, but painting the roses always felt so right these days, filled her with such a bittersweet ache and steady warmth, that no matter what he said, he couldn't faze her. His words broke against her serenity like waves on rocks.

The roses should be red. She didn't know why, but she knew she was right.

Only once did she ask him to join her.

"Try it," she said, offering him the handle of her own brush, thinking it might calm him like it calmed her. He started back from it like it was a striking snake, and the look in his eyes when they met hers was so panicked and stricken that she cringed and pulled it instantly away.

"I… can't," he said in a strangled tone, his voice strangely broken. "I mustn't. I can't. Don't… don't ask it of me, Jane. It's impossible."

Jane didn't understand. To hear him speak, you'd think she'd asked him to cut out his own heart. But she nodded, accepting his refusal; dreams didn't always make sense. And, much to his very vocal irritation, she went back to painting.

.

* * *

With nothing else to do, no visits from Thor or Erik – the pair of traitors, as she had currently labeled them – Jane had little to do with her time but throw herself into her work. It was not much different from before, actually, except that she took a maintenance shaft to work instead of the London Underground.

She kept up appearances, of course, making angry phone calls, leaving angry voice mails, sending angry emails through every channel and to every SHIELD liaison she knew of, as well as submitting a few slightly less scathing appeals to Stark Industries; from the former she received officious, generic and dismissive replies (when they bothered to reply at all), while Tony Stark personally responded to the latter with a worrying level of sincere regret and an assurance that his sponsorship of her work would resume as soon as possible, but for now, had to be postponed. Strangely, this worried Jane more than anything. If Tony Stark wasn't cracking off sarcastic one-liners, something was extremely wrong. Her determination to get to the bottom of it was ratcheted ever higher.

Her only other contact was with Darcy. They exchanged emails frequently. Certain that SHIELD was monitoring her correspondence, Jane made sure to complain viciously and at length to about their latest infringement on her research, but made no mention of her secret lab, even though she like to think Darcy would have found it thrilling. If she'd been there with Jane, she'd probably be humming the Mission Impossible theme song all day long, and acting like one of Charlie's Angels every few minutes, just to be cute. Jane missed that about her; she had always managed to keep Jane from becoming too serious with herself. It had been less than a month, but she felt Darcy's absence more acutely than ever.

Yet Darcy's new ventures were proving useful to Jane as well.

Darcy was interning again already, in the department of records under some minor government official; _political _science this time. Apparently there were rumors going around her new circles about some secret talks taking place amongst the influential big wigs, and she swore she'd seen "those Men-in-Black rejects from SHIELD" lurking around, asking questions and guarding doors and escorting defense officials along with "some crusty old dudes in lab coats" in and out of the upper floors. On top of that, she was vehemently certain that she had seen Captain America for an instant as he crossed one of the corridors and ducked into a locked staircase that required a security code to access. She was full of ideas on what it might mean, from stolen nuclear warheads to sun spots.

_::I'll keep my eyes open,_ (she wrote) _maybe do some digging, and keep you up to date. I'll let you know if I need your super-hunk to come bust some skulls!::_

Jane thought about telling Darcy that Thor had gone over to the dark side, and possibly Erik too, and that if she got herself into trouble sticking her nose where it didn't belong, she'd essentially be on her own.

She almost did. She typed the words out and stared at them. Then she deleted them, and wrote:

_::Let me know if you hear anything. They can't get away with this.::_

Hating herself a little, she clicked 'send'.

.

* * *

Jane shut off the micro-welder and took off her goggles, crinkling her nose at the acrid stench of molten metal. With a set of heat resistant tongs, she lifted the newly finished module up to the light, inspecting it with an eagerly satisfied smile. Two weeks had elapsed since the confiscation of her lab, and she was finally ready to launch the next phase of her research.

As near as she could figure, Erik had ratted her out to SHIELD when she launched her first probe into orbit, and that was why they had shut her down. The only reason they would do that was because she had stumbled onto the right trail. She was willing to bet anything those anomalous readings weren't anomalous at all. She just didn't have enough information. The problem wasn't with her probes; it was with her perspective.

The limitations on her resources and work space had forced her to be innovative; necessity was indeed the mother of invention. If Stark Industries ever took an interest in her work again, she'd have plenty of output with which to justify spending so much of their money.

She had managed to construct a much smaller, self-contained module of the gravimetric field generators. Working on an idea she'd formulated after a particularly tiring debate with Loki about the differences between gravitational force and magic (Jane had an idea that he might actually be proposing a new Grand Unified Theory – if only he would stop using the phrase "it's magic") had found a way to tie them into the power sources of the converters; the gravitational field produced on activation of the generators constantly recharged the converters, which in turn fed the generators; a self-sustaining power source.

A self-sustaining power source that could theoretically keep the model working indefinitely without any external input or maintenance; it was, not to put too fine a point on it, mind-blowing. Not nearly as flashy as Stark's arc reactor, but nothing to sneeze at. Now if only she could steer the thing. But for now, the computer could handle vector inputs and power levels with the new software she'd written for it. All told, it was _far_ more efficient than the earlier models.

Efficient was just what she needed, because she was about to attempt a _true _test of the converter's abilities.

Gathering up five converters, to which she'd attached five probes, she lined them up in a neat row on her work bench, giving each a final, thorough once over. She needed a much wider view of the problem than she'd been able to get with the single probe in orbit.

Consulting her orbital diagrams one final time, rechecking the calculations and plotted coordinates matched the computer simulation, she input the figures through the program, took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and hit 'Enter'.

There was a series of beeps as the computer processed the request and wirelessly transmitted the appropriate signals to each probe…

_FLASH! _Even from behind her eyelids, the light blasted Jane's retinas, shockingly bright. _As bright as the Bifrost_.

Jane carefully refrained from jumping up and down as she blinked the spots from her eyes to see that the probes were gone. If all had gone as planned, two were currently in orbit along with the first one she'd sent weeks earlier, which was still gratifyingly transmitting its confusing data.

The other three were her real guinea pigs. She had, theoretically, sent them to three equidistant points outside the far edges of the solar system. It made her mind boggle as she focused on the small spatial distortion that remained in the air above the work bench, just how far that little hole in space and time went – that if she reached into the generated field, she could be pulled light years away in an instant. Of course, then she'd be in the vacuum of space, and dead in an instant. But still.

Bright lights aside, it was no Bifrost. But it was _remarkable_. If it worked.

Jane didn't think she took a real, proper breath until, minutes later, the first data sets started coming in, transmitted from the exact coordinates she had specified. Her shriek of triumph echoed off the copper boilers and she had to clap her hands over her mouth. But nothing could stop her from grinning like a madwoman – or maybe mad scientist. It really, _really _worked!

She wanted to celebrate, to tell someone who could understand the momentousness of this breakthrough and watch them grow as excited as she was, laugh and shout and shake the window panes with cheers at the bright, promising future.

Even as the desire manifest, it sobered her. There wasn't anyone to tell. Her friends were distant, her lover was the very person she had to keep her success from, and her every external interaction was potentially being monitored by the shadow government. The only place she seemed safe from all intrusion, oppression or exclusion was inside her own head.

Loki's face flooded her mind.

He was, she realized with a pang of helplessness, the one she wanted to share it with most of all.

She wanted him here with her, now.

She wanted to throw her arms around his neck, have him pick her up and twirl her around as they laughed together.

And then she would slide down his body as they stopped spinning, her arms pulling his head down with her, so that when she tilted her face up to look at him, his lips would be right there, so close. Then she imagined she could see the green of his eyes, feel the heat of his mouth on her skin, the teasing glide of his hands sliding down over her hips, the smell of his skin as he pulled her closer…

Jane gasped and shivered, swallowing against a whimper that tried to work its way out of her throat as she literally trembled with a sudden onslaught of dizzying desire. She wandered over to the wall for support, found it inadequate, and slid down it to sit on the cold concrete floor. Even through the heavy weave of her jeans, it felt like a block of ice to her suddenly feverish body, just the shock she needed to get her breath back and calm her thundering heart. Apparently it had been _way _too long since she'd been with a man.

She thought of Thor, and immediately shook her head. Though he was an exceptional lover, the idea of calling him back to her bed made the pit of her stomach twist into knots. There was something broken between them now, and until it was fixed, she didn't know how she would relate to him again, much less sleep with him. And there was simply no denying, in any case, that it wasn't the thought of him that had ignited her body like a fire cracker.

With a moan, Jane let her head fall into her hands, pulled in opposite directions by undeniable longing and cruel reality, defeated by the irresolvable.

"Why can't you be real?" she begged the shadows.

They remained unhelpfully silent; the whirring of the generators and the occasional beep of the computer her only companions. Eventually, she told herself that she was being ridiculous – and the cold was making her legs fall asleep – and pulled herself together. There was nothing to do now but wait for the probes to send a complete data set and the computer to analyze it, and it would be a while before it was finished.

Shutting off the lights, she set off back up the ladder, humming _When You Wish Upon a Star_, and promising herself a hot shower, Chinese takeout and a celebratory glass of wine for a job well done.

.

* * *

The phone rang as she was getting ready for bed that night. Jane stilled when she saw the call was coming from the cell phone she'd given Thor. How long had it been since they had spoken? In fact, when had he _ever _called her? She wasn't sure he'd ever actually used the phone before. If he wanted to talk to her, he'd always just taken up Mjolnir and flown to where she was. Why now…?

Given her unsanctioned experiments earlier in the day, she was afraid she might have some idea… but no. Not even SHIELD could have surveillance in the abandoned boiler room under her flat. He couldn't possibly know about her tests. She bit her lip and considered letting it go to voicemail.

Almost the instant the thought materialized she dismissed it, disgusted with herself. They were having trouble, it was true, but this man was still technically her boyfriend. What kind of girlfriend looked for excuses not to take her boyfriend's calls?

_A terrible one. _

She put down her hair brush and answered hit the green button.

"Jane?"

"Hi," she said carefully. "This is… a first."

"Yes," he agreed, sounding awkward, and almost as careful as she did. "It is disconcerting to hear your voice without being able to see your face."

"Is everything… I mean, you know… how are you?" She winced, feeling her stomach twisting in knots. Why was this so hard?

"I am well," he assured her. "And… how are you?"

"I'm… okay." It was on the tip of her tongue to say she was 'bored', without her confiscated research, but she quickly thought better of it. She wouldn't lie to him if she could help it. She had to have more integrity than that. "I was just… getting ready for… bed…" She was blushing and didn't know why. This was Thor, but she felt like she was talking to a stranger.

"Of course, I see, the time difference… I had forgotten…"

"But it's okay!" she said hastily, worried he'd think she was complaining. "I… it's, um… good to hear from you. But um… listen, is everything alright? It's just, I got you this phone forever ago, and you've never used it even once. I mean, I thought maybe you didn't even know how to use it, but then I thought, of course you know how to use it, you can fly spaceships, so how hard can a cell phone be, and I figured it just wasn't your style, you know, so I was just kind of surprised to hear from you… and…"

Jane's heart constricted to hear the deep, thrum of Thor chuckling from the other end of the line.

"Oh, Jane, I have missed the sound of your voice."

Jane's eyes slid closed, pain lancing through her chest.

"Even when I ramble like an idiot?" she asked in a choked tone.

"Especially then," he said, some of his old familiar warmth returning. "But you never sound like an idiot."

Jane could only huff out a quiet laugh, unsure what to say. His words should make her feel warm and valued and loved. But all they made her feel was sad.

"So, to what do I owe the honor?" she asked, proud of how steady her voice remained.

"Of course, yes," he seemed to collect himself, a businesslike note entering his voice. "I wanted to tell you that I am going to Asgard for a short time. To speak with my father about… er, that is... to visit him. I could tell, last time, how deeply it bothered you that I left Midgard without your knowledge. So… I merely wanted to… inform you."

Jane's was quiet for a long time as she tried to force words through a throat that seemed to be squeezed shut. He was still keeping massive secrets from her. No matter how good he thought his reasons, he had betrayed her. But there could be no doubt in her mind that he was thinking of her. That he cared about her.

She swallowed hard, and barely managed a strangled, "Thank you, Thor."

"You are most welcome, Jane," he said warmly, apparently taking her emotional speechlessness for gratitude rather than crushing guilt and formless loss. "I must go now, time is short. I…" Jane had a moment of panic when she thought he was going to say he loved her. Adrenaline spiked at the thought of having to say it back, and for an instant she truly hated herself. "I just… Jane, if anything should happen while I am gone, promise me that you will do whatever it takes to keep yourself safe."

"What do you mean?" she asked, possibly too quickly, her voice a little too sharp, her eyes widening, then narrowing as she silently willed him to answer her. "What do you think is going to happen?"

Silence on the other end of the line. Jane waited, frowning, until she wondered if the connection had been lost. She was just about to hang up and call him back, when his voice came through, startling her.

"I don't think anything will happen," he lied badly. "I just want you to be safe. But if anything _should_ happen… I will command Heimdall to listen for you, and if anything should happen, call out to him, and he will open the Bifrost to you and bring you safely away. Promise me, Jane."

Jane's shoulders slumped, disappointment and a muted anger swirling through her system in the wake of the adrenaline. The swell of wistful guilt began to shrivel.

"I'll certainly do my best," she said wearily. "I hope you have a good trip. Bye."

She hung up the phone before he could say anything else, barely caring about how rude she'd been. She didn't think she had the mental energy to deal with more emotional whiplash, and her mind was racing back and forth between Thor and this nameless threat that had him worried enough to seek such a promise from her.

He cared enough to think of her feelings before taking a trip off the planet, but he wouldn't warn her of what kind of danger she might be facing while he was gone. And there was no way he would have said such things if danger wasn't immanent. The fact that he was going to talk to Odin about it meant that it was a threat of an interstellar nature. Her strange readings and Erik's harsh, out-of-hand rejection of them only seemed to confirm it.

With a troubled mind, Jane climbed into bed, her head sinking against her pillow with exhaustion. To hell with all this cloak and dagger ambiguity. The data analysis from her probes could not finish soon enough.

.

* * *

Jane did not know how much time passed between the moment she fell asleep and the moment she found herself painting roses in the garden; she could never tell. Nor did she know how long she had been painting, exactly. There was never a kind of 'start' to her dreams, it was as though she simply became aware of them sometime after they had already begun. Thus, she was in the midst of painting when she gradually came to herself, almost finished with the rose she was working on.

She was so intent on painting, that at first she didn't realize how quiet it was. The only sound was the soft musical hum of the flower beds. An incongruous feeling of foreboding started low in her stomach, and her brush stilled in her hand. Red paint oozed in a fat red glob from the bristles, pooling heavy on the petals before slipping down to fall like a bloody tear to splatter on the grass.

Slowly Jane lowered the brush and, with infinite reluctance, turned her head to take in the rest of the garden. Foreboding turned to a little flutter of panic to find the dream had changed once again.

For the first time in a long time, she was alone in her dreams. Loki was gone.

.

* * *

**TBC**

.

* * *

**A/n: **The plot thickens? Thor appears to have gone over to the dark side, Jane has gone rogue, and Loki has gone missing. What will happen next? Let me know what you think! Hopefully you won't have to wait very long to find out; but no matter how hectic things get in my neck of the woods, I _will_ still be writing, so please be patient, more is on the way!


	7. Monsterman

**Disclaimer: **You know how it goes, not mine, not for sale, pop goes the weasel.

**A/n: **This chapter contains one of the first scenes I ever wrote for this story (after my 48 hour movie binge). So blame it all on Walt Disney, he probably deserves it anyway. Bon appetit!

* * *

_**Chapter 6**_

_Monsterman_

.

* * *

_Would you love a monsterman?_  
_Could you understand beauty of the beast?_  
_I would do it all for you, would you do it all_  
_Do it all for me?_

_\- Lordi_

.

* * *

The garden was hollow with his absence, silent and empty. It was chilling.

Jane did her very best to distract herself. She had abandoned her half-painted rose and gone to stand in the middle of the garden, games and toys lying abandoned all around her, and for a long while just stood there, wondering what to do. Eventually she'd reasoned that he must be in the hedge maze, and decided to go look for him. After about the fifteenth time she exited the garden, only to round the next bend and wander right back into it, she gave up that idea and stood once more chewing on her lip, unsure – and unwilling to contemplate what his absence might mean. She couldn't... but… what if… what if he was…

Gone? Just gone?

The thought filled her with a kind of swelling dread that she couldn't face without trembling. To never see Loki again… the mere thought was unbearable. She couldn't stand still for long without being overwhelmed by it. The whole place felt utterly _wrong _without him there with her.

_He's never with me though, not really. He's not real. He's not real. I'm alone in my own head, whether he's here or not!_

That should count for something, but it didn't. It didn't matter. All that mattered was that she could _feel _his absence, where he'd always been before, and it felt like a piece of her was missing. It was unthinkable that she might never dream of him again. She wasn't sure she could believe it and stay sane.

So she didn't stand still long enough for the untenable notion to catch up with her. She paced the garden, teasing the flowers, shuffling the cards, rearranging the croquet wickets. She tried to take up the paint brush again, but she found her need to paint was strangely reduced to almost nothing without Loki there with her. She found three balls and spent some time trying to juggle them, threw darts at the dart board and missed every time, discovered a pool table and quickly grew bored with instantly sinking the balls every time - pool was nothing but mathematics, angles and application of force, so for Jane it was barely a game at all, much less a challenge. She threw the pool cue aside, aware that her mood was deteriorating.

She dropped down onto one of the marble benches with a sigh, trying to decide if crying a bit would make her feel better. Her eyes drifted towards the hedge wall. Towards one of the red roses. It was the first one she'd painted – the one she'd never thought she'd get through painting.

There was something oddly comforting in the sight of it, and she thought maybe she could smell its sweet fragrance in particular from across the garden. Rising, she approached it, reaching out to caress its petals. The paint had dried long ago; she'd done such a good job with it that the paint had become part of the flower, and it was no longer painted – it was a true red rose now. She cradled it delicately in both hands, bringing it to her face. There was a quiet little _snap,_ and it came free in her hands. It was large and heavy enough that she had to carry it in both arms, hugging it to her chest and toting it back to sit on the bench. It reminded her somehow of the rose blooming beside her bedroom window.

With it cradled there in her lap, she felt calm enough to breath more easily. Loki would come. He would. He wouldn't leave without saying goodbye. She believed in that. She believed in him. A rueful little smile curved the corner of her mouth as she recognized the awful irony in having no one to trust but the god of lies. It was hard not to wonder once again if she had lost her mind.

"_W___e're all mad here. ___I'm mad. You're mad._" she quoted with a smirk and a quiet sigh. "_You must be, or you wouldn't have come here.' _"

Her face fell into a wistful expression as she looked down at the rose. No, she wasn't crazy. Nothing so simple. She was in love, and that was much more devastating. She hugged the rose closer against the ache in her chest and quickly lost herself in its nearness, tracing and counting its petals, humming softly, and soon lost all track or sense of time.

There was no knowing how long she sat there singing to herself before she was startled out of her tranquil reverie.

.

* * *

"I've never heard that melody."

Jane gasped and shot to her feet, spinning in place. The rose burst in her grasp as her heart leapt in her chest, scattering hundreds of tiny red petals that rained down all around her as an accent to her relief and joy.

"Loki!" she exclaimed, barely caring how eagerly overjoyed her voice sounded with his name on her lips. "Where were you? What… what's wrong?"

She could tell at a glance that something was amiss. For one thing, his casual clothes were gone, and he was back in full armor – the only thing missing was the sweeping golden-horned helmet. But more than that, much more, was the expression on his face. Or lack thereof. His face was a cold emotionless mask and his eyes were dark with some vague but unpleasant emotion. After a moment, he smirked at her, cocking an eyebrow at the raining petals; his manner was distant, impersonal and mocking.

But when she caught and held his gaze, he proved unable to hold onto his frozen front of indifference and invulnerability. It seemed to melt away from him in stages, his eyes widening with the loss of it, before his eyelids drooped and his lips parted in a long weary sigh.

"Trouble in paradise," he said, a faint, half-hearted sneer in his voice that didn't have enough sting in it to make her bat an eye. He turned away from her and began to pace around towards the chess table. Jane followed him, worried. They sat down across from each other, Loki playing black, Jane playing white. She made her first move without having to be invited to the game; this was what they played when discussing serious subjects.

"What do you mean?" Jane asked, trying to balance the tone of the question between her burning desire to know, and her reluctance to push him too hard. When he didn't answer right away, she went on. "I was… surprised when I arrived and you weren't here," she told him tentatively.

"I'm a busy man, Jane," he replied somewhat flippantly, smirking teasingly at her from under his brow, though the expression still looked weary. "I have kingdom to run."

"A kingdom?" she wondered, intrigued. She tried a playful smile. "You mean you don't just spend your days here playing?"

"Not at all!" he replied with an exaggeration of high indignity, as though she'd offended him terribly. She was gratified to see his eyes liven with a hint of mischief. "I told you long ago, you ransomed me here from the afterworld. But when I return there each day, I am a mighty king of a wondrous shining realm."

"Is that so," she said philosophically, with an arch smirk at which he narrowed his eyes. "So what is this afterlife of yours like?"

Loki rolled his eyes at her, but his expression was warmer.

"I have everything I always wanted in life. I am king of a prosperous and beautiful land, with the respect and adoration of my subjects. And everyone who ever doubted or betrayed me in life now bows to me and obeys my every command. My every ideal has been realized."

_Sounds like heaven, _Jane thought, _or at least Loki's version of it._

"Sounds great," she affirmed. "Is it everything you hoped it would be?"

She instantly regretted her question as all his returning warmth and animation faltered and drained away in a steady stream, leaving his posture and expression empty. He looked away.

"It's… not quite what I imagined," he admitted quietly, his voice hollow and shadowed with something like an echo of regret. "Somewhat… anticlimactic." He glanced up at her, then away again. "And lonely."

Jane watched him as he reached across the board to take her bishop with his knight, an answering hollow ache panging through her chest. _Not heaven then,_ she decided, moving her rook two spaces ahead. To finally get what you had spent your entire life striving for, only to discover that you had wasted your life working for something you never suspected that you didn't want? _Definitely hell. _ Less surprising in a way, but it didn't make her hurt for him any less. She wanted – needed – to take away his pain.

As he contemplated his next move, she began to sing.

_ "A dream is a wish your heart makes when you're fast asleep. In dreams you will lose your heartaches. Whatever you wish for, you keep. Have faith in your dreams and someday your rainbow will come smiling through. No matter how your heart is grieving, if you keep on believing, the dream that you wish will come true."_

The words tried to catch in her throat several times as she realized just how true, and yet how cruelly impossible, the song was for her. This dream was indeed a wish her heart made; but there was no way for it to come true, because the object of her heart's desire was long dead. Yet she sang for his sake, hoping it would be a comfort. Singing usually distracted him.

Tonight, however, she cringed to see that her song seemed to have caused him even _more _pain. His jaw clenched against his misery, as though he were trying to keep from crying out in agony or frustration, and his face was tight with a poorly suppressed anguish that tore at her like a knife between the ribs.

"Such a strange song," he said, his voice breathy as though he were in true, physical pain. "Who thinks up such nonsense?"

The words were derisive. But his tone said that he would give anything to believe the lyrics were true.

"Tell me about it," she offered with quiet empathy, scooting one of her pawns forward. "Tell me about your dreams. What did you wish for?"

They played on in silence long enough to convince Jane he wasn't going to answer her.

"I only ever had one wish."

He was so quiet that Jane barely heard him. She bit down on her lip to keep from speaking and kept her eyes on the chess board. A glance was all she risked, and found him sitting very still, chin propped on one hand, his elbow propped on the table, in posture of supreme boredom. But he was staring at the board so hard she was afraid he might crack it in two with his eyes. She followed suit, waiting for him to make his next move, in every sense.

When he moved his knight, her rook took it. Loki made a face and tsked at his rookie mistake.

"All I ever wanted was to be Thor's equal," he said, his voice gaining a little of the strength of his frustration. The words fell from his mouth like razor blades, painfully sharp with an old bitterness, cutting into her ears, just as painful to hear as they must be to speak. "To make my father proud, to be treasured by the people around me rather than feared and avoided and _tolerated_. To be spoken about behind my back with respect rather than mistrust. To be seen as strong and worthy. To be trusted… to be loved. And in the end, is that really so much? Is it so strange? Isn't that what ever man wants? Hmph." His queen took her knight. "The same wish for a thousand years. To be his equal. The same fool's dream. All the while it was never possible in the first place. No one could love a monster – and the Aesir least of all."

Jane opened her mouth, then thought better of it and quickly closed it. In spite of his stillness, his continued agitation was plain as day to her. He wasn't finished. Whatever this wound was, it ran deep. She said nothing, examining the board for her next move, and waited.

"If even one of them had trusted me, it never would have happened the way it did," he hissed suddenly through clenched teeth. His eyes were on fire with that old bitter rage, still trained on the chess board, but not seeing it in the slightest. "I was king. I was rightfully king. Thor was banished, and for good reason. Odin was mired in the Odinsleep, Frigga refusing to leave his side. None of them knew what I was then. As far as they knew I was the rightful prince of Asgard. And I was rightfully made king."

Jane moved her queen, and took his bishop.

Loki shot to his feet so suddenly that it startled a gasp from her. She watched him with wide eyes as he paced back and forth beside the table, frowning hard enough to pull a muscle.

"All I _ever_ wanted was to be Thor's equal. Even after I found out I was one of those savage _creatures,_ I clung to that hope. If I could just prove myself a good king, I could be more than a monster."

He rounded on her, slamming his fist down on the edge of the board hard enough to make the pieces rattle. He leaned on the clenched fist and his head shot down and forward. His face was just suddenly _there_ before her, his eyes wide with a fury that bordered on insanity, so that she could do nothing but startle and draw up, blinking in surprise. She didn't recoil. She didn't let herself.

"But even when I was king and Thor was nothing more than a powerless mortal, he was still better than me. Still worthier than me. Still more trustworthy. Still better loved. By _everyone_."

The last word sounded like it has been dragged out of him through a gauntlet of broken glass. He wheeled away to stand several paces away with his back to her.

"So they betrayed me. Do you understand, Jane? I wasn't the traitor. _They _betrayed _me_! Even Heimdall, who couldn't bear to break an oath even if it killed him, would not honor his sworn duty for my sake. If they had just _trusted _me, just for once… if those fools hadn't gone for Thor when I forbid it, I never would have had to…"

Loki's shoulders slumped, and his head bowed. Silence hung heavy in the air. He drew in a slow, deep breath, his head and shoulders rising again. Then he spun back around, threw himself down onto the bench opposite her with haphazard carelessness, cocked his head at the board, and made the first move he saw.

"Check."

Jane blinked and realized her king was indeed in check. She considered the arrangement of the pieces before her.

"Do you ever regret it?"

She hadn't meant to speak. She glanced up at him to find him looking at her as though he had forgotten she was there. He blinked, nonplussed, and she looked back down at the board. He snorted rather inelegantly

"Would it matter if I did?" he asked, scorn coloring each word.

"Yes," she said simply. She moved her rook, taking his bishop and countering the check.

"No," he replied. She looked up at him. He was staring off to one side, a thoughtful frown furrowing his brow. "Yes," he amended. He shook his head and the furrow deepened. "How do I answer that?" he asked her, glancing at her askance and meeting her gaze from the corner of his eyes. Jane was suddenly struck by the angular masculine beauty of his profile. His brow smoothed, and he turned to face her more fully. That charming, sarcastic smile made its appearance, doing devastating things to her ability to breathe normally. "I regret the very _animal _that I am, Jane. Everything beyond that seems pointless to trifle over. I regret everything, and I regret nothing, and everyone regrets me. That is the fact of it."

"I don't regret you," she said, and she wasn't even sorry she had, even though it had slipped out without her permission. She could feel Loki's eyes on her, but when she worked up the courage to look at him, his eyes quickly darted away. His smile turned rueful.

"Well, you're still young," he reasoned waspishly.

For some reason far beyond her comprehension, that stinging rejoinder surprised a quiet snicker out of Jane. The small sound drew his eyes swiftly back her face, and whatever he saw there seemed to melt something hard and cold in his eyes. A slow, sincere smile made of startled, silent mirth spread reluctantly over his face, and he glanced down almost shyly as his shoulders trembled with suppressed laughter.

"Feel better?" she asked wryly, drinking in his every abruptly gentle movement and expression. Every time she thought she had puzzled out his moods and patterns, he found a way to throw her, and she was now so accustomed to his temperamental nature that it no longer fazed or frightened her – only sparked her curiosity. She longed to solve him, and she hoped she never would.

Loki drew in a deep breath, calming from his quiet laughter, then narrowed his eyes and tilted his head back slightly so that he could look at her down the length of his nose.

"No," he said with a thoughtful air. "I won't feel any better until you sing for me the song you were humming when I arrived. It had a pleasing lilt to it. I won't feel better until I hear it."

"What a shame," Jane replied, adopting a similar tone, apparently unimpressed, raising her eyebrows at him and looking back at the board. Her king was back in check. "I never sing when I'm losing."

In response, and to her complete astonishment, Loki reached out and tipped his king over. Jane goggled at the fallen chess piece, then turned her disbelief on its owner, her jaw falling open. Loki _never _gave up an advantage. He played to win _every _time.

"You… but that's… I… you..." was the extent of Jane's intelligent inquiry on the event.

Loki grinned, rising from his chair and stalking around the table towards her.

"Only a fool holds onto an inferior token when there's superior prize to be had by letting it go," he explained smugly to her unarticulated question.

Jane gasped as he suddenly pulled her from her seat by the hand and whisked her over to an open patch of grass. Another, slightly nervous giggle escaped her as, using the leverage of his momentum, he pulled her around and lowered her gently to the ground. The grass was cool and soft under her. It didn't prickle like real grass would.

He paused then and stood towering over her, his armor gleaming like liquid sunlight, his eyes lit with fascination, seeming arrested by the sight of her sitting at his feet, as though examining strange creature he'd never encountered before. She wondered if her eyes were shining the same way as she craned her neck to take him in. From this angle, she suddenly understood why he had once been worshiped as a god. He was magnificently striking and she smiled up at him, a small, amused smile, even though nothing was really funny. He looked like he deserved to rule worlds, and she didn't think it was just her feelings for him talking.

"Do you..." she cocked her head thoughtfully, sobering. "...do you really believe that freedom is a lie?" she asked him, running her fingers lazily through the grass.

If the sudden question unsettled him, he didn't let it show. Instead he stared intently down at her, as though looking for the answer in her eyes.

"I used to," he finally replied. "Completely. All my life I was a prince, and still I was inferior. I dreamed of a freedom once. My childish wish." He smirked. "I wished for equality, but I believed in power; the power of kingship, and loyalty."

He looked away, staring off at the red and white roses on the hedge.

"When I was king, I trusted to that power, and it was my unmaking. I trusted love, and it was my downfall – in every sense. For a long time I could see _nothing_ but masters and slaves, wherever I went, users and the used. I was the master for a brief, promising moment. Then…" A shiver passed through him as a shadow of some horrible memory flitted over his face. "…then I was slave, Jane, and I… suffered. And I swore that I would do anything to be the master again. _Sacrifice_ anything…"

He swallowed hard, glancing down at her, then away. She thought she saw a flash of something like guilt or shame, but it was gone before she could be sure.

"Now I am master again, and it thrilled me. For a time. But novelty wears off. Now… all I feel is… empty." He sighed, dragging a hand over his face. "Masters, slaves… I can't see the difference any longer."

"So what do you believe in now, Loki?"

"Now?" His hand dropped away and he smirked with self contempt and a shadow of pain. "Now, I've become a sentimental fool."

Jane was on the point of asking him what he meant, when he shook himself and looked back down at her, narrowing his eyes. He smiled teasingly at her, clearly dismissing the subject and ropped down to crouch beside her, cocking a demonstrative eyebrow.

"Well, Jane? You're not losing any longer."

Jane rolled her eyes and huffed out a quiet laugh at his phrasing – even when he forfeit of his own free will, he couldn't stand to admit that he'd lost the game.

"Yes, I did _win_," Jane allowed dryly, too happy to have him back beside her to even put up a proper show of denying him. "Should I sing in celebration of my victory, Loki?" It was phrased as a question, but her tone was sarcastic, teasing him right back.

He sat down on the ground beside her, cross-legged, and leaned his elbows on his knees. He laced his fingers together and propped his chin on his knuckles, watching her with a gleam of anticipation in his eye that almost subsumed the inexplicable fascination still lurking there.

"Does this song have a story?" he asked, and her chest felt warm and tingly at the boyishly hopeful note in his voice.

"It does," she replied. "It's called _Beauty and the Beast. _One of my favorites. My father used to tell me I was just like Belle, the heroine of the story." She smiled fondly at the memory, a tender expression softening her face. "'A dreamy far off look and her nose stuck in a book'," she quoted with a small laugh. It had made her feel special at a time when everyone else only saw her as a nerdy little oddball.

Loki's studying gaze never wavered, but his lips parted in a quiet sigh as his eyes traveled over her face.

"Tell me," he said quietly, closing his eyes as he did sometimes during her storytelling. It was phrased as a command, but the gentle quality of his voice made it a request. Her heart fluttered as the low, intimate quality of his tone skated along her skin.

While he couldn't see her, she allowed herself the guilty pleasure of unabashedly staring at his face, studying every line, memorizing every plane and angle, imprinting the color of his lips and the length of his eyelashes onto her retinas, burning them into her mind. Then she turned her eyes towards the cloudless twilight sky of the dreamscape.

"_Once upon a time, in a faraway land, a young prince lived in a shining castle. Although he was beloved and beautiful, and had everything his heart desired, the prince was spoiled, selfish and unkind_."

"Was his name Thor?" Loki interjected, smirking. His eyes remained closed.

Jane rolled her eyes. "Hush," she scolded. "_One night, an old beggar woman came to the castle, and offered the prince a single red rose in return for shelter from the bitter cold_."

"What is this Midgardian fascination with red roses?"

"Do you want to hear this story, or not?"

"Of course," he said, his smirk growing into an impish smile at her irritation. "Please do go on."

"Hmph," Jane replied. "Where was I?"

"A red rose."

"Don't take that tone with me, mister."

"Are you going to tell the story, or not?"

He was grinning broadly by now, and Jane was fighting a fit of giggles. Drawing in a deep breath, she straightened her face and ordered her thoughts, tracing through the story to search for the best words. Her face slowly fell, and her voice stuck stubbornly in her throat for a moment as her eyes widened. This story... she flicked a glance at him, wondering if she should really go on.

"Jane?"

"Um... right..." Jane cleared her throat. _Here goes nothing.  
_

"_Repulsed by the old woman's haggard appearance, the prince sneered at the gift and turned her away. But she warned him not to be deceived by appearances, for beauty was found within. And when he dismissed her again, the old woman's ugliness melted away to reveal a beautiful enchantress. The prince tried to apologize, but it was too late, for she had seen that there was no love in his heart_."

Jane paused, glancing at Loki who sat, his eyes closed, his face relaxed, listening intently. "As punishment…" She swallowed hard and pushed on.

"_As punishment she transformed him from a handsome prince into a hideous beast_…" Loki's eyes fluttered open, and she very quickly turned hers back towards the sky. "…_and placed a powerful spell on the castle and all who lived there_."

She could feel his gaze on her skin.

"_Ashamed of his monstrous form, the beast concealed himself inside his castle, with a magic mirror as his only window to the outside world. The rose she had offered was truly an enchanted rose, which would bloom until his twenty-first year. If he could learn to love another, and earn her love in return by the time the last petal fell, then the spell would be broken. If not, he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time_."

Loki was so still that if she didn't know he was there, she would have thought she was alone in the garden again. She didn't even think he was breathing.

"_As the years passed, he fell into despair and lost all hope. For who could ever learn to love a beast?_"

Loki's own words from earlier echoed in her ears - _'No one could love a monster...' _\- and she winced inwardly. She didn't dare look at him.

"_Some years later, a young peasant woman lived in a nearby village with her father. Her name was Belle, which means 'beauty'. And though she was sweet and kind, she was lonely. The villagers thought she was a very strange, because she loved nothing more than to read books and dream of grand adventures in far off lands_."

She caught movement out of the corner of her eye, and risked a furtive glance his way. His eyes were cast down introspectively, but the corner of his lips had quirked up slightly at her description of Belle. Jane, remembering that she'd compared herself to Belle, blushed in mortification and hastily moved on.

"_Even so, one of the men of the village, decided that he wanted her for his wife, since she was the most beautiful woman in the village. His name was Gaston, and he was strong and handsome, admired and influential amongst the villagers, but he was brutish, vain, arrogant, violent and selfish._"

"That one's Thor," Loki murmured, so quiet she barely heard him. She didn't dignify the comment with a response, but he was still smirking when she looked, so she took it as a fair balance.

"_Belle despised him_," Jane continued. Loki made a vindictively pleased little sound in the back of his throat. "_When she refused to marry him, Gaston, was enraged at her rejection, and swore that he would have her for his wife in the end_."

"_Now, Belle's father was thought to be very strange by the people, as well. He was an inventor, and it was whispered amongst the villagers that he was insane. But in truth, he was simply a dreamer, like his daughter. One day, he invented a wood chopping machine, which would save the people hours of back-breaking labor. Convinced it would make his fortune, he loaded the machine into his cart and set off for a fair in the neighboring kingdom, promising Belle to return with fame and riches_."

"_The journey should have been a simple one, but the old man took a wrong turn that led him deep into the forest. When night began to fall he realized he had lost his way. As he turned to go back, a baleful howl rose from the shadows of the trees all around, and the hungry yellow eyes of a wolf pack glared out from the shadows."_

Loki was leaning forward slightly, caught in the web of Jane's storytelling. She loved watching him become enthralled in a tale, especially since it meant he wasn't thinking about the disturbing parallels between himself and the Beast. Her voice gained richness and animation as she wove the tale with her words.

"_The old man's horse was driven out of its mind with terror. It threw him to the ground, and bolted. Alone and afraid, the old man fled deeper into the forest to escape the pursuing wolves, where he stumbled upon a mysterious old castle. It was, of course, the castle of the Beast. The old man hurried inside to safety. Or so he thought. As soon as he entered he discovered that the castle was enchanted. All of the furniture and household items could walk and talk like humans. Otherwise the castle appeared deserted. However, he soon discovered the terrible truth, when the Beast discovered him warming his hands by the fire. Enraged at the intruder, unmoved by the old man's plight, the Beast imprisoned him the freezing darkness of the castle tower as punishment for laying eyes on him in his beastly state..._"

Here Jane faltered as the old inventor imprisoned by the Beast brought to mind thoughts of Erik imprisoned within his own mind, enslaved to Loki's will. What would Erik say, to see her lounging on the grass entertaining the enemy of humanity with fairy tales? She suddenly had to blink very hard against the sting of tears in her eyes, and kept them trained firmly on vast expanse of the sky. She certainly couldn't meet Loki's eyes with the conflicted misery that must be written all over her face.

"_Belle woke the next morning to find her father's horse had returned without him. Worried that something had happened to him, Belle climbed into the saddle herself and begged the horse to take her to him. The loyal creature did as it was told, and by nightfall they had reached the gates of the Beast's castle. Belle went inside, calling out for her father. The enchanted attendants hoped that this girl might break the spell and return them to human form, so they enticed her further into the castle without showing themselves, and led her into the tower where she found her father locked in a stone cell. She looked for a way to free him, but before she could do more than turn around, the Beast had discovered her_."

"_Though she was frightened by the Beast's savage appearance, Belle begged the Beast to release her father. The Beast refused. Desperate, Belle offered to take her father's place as the Beast's prisoner. Despite her father's protests, the Beast agreed, but only on the condition that Belle would swear to remain there in the castle forever. For her father's sake, Belle swore it. In an instant the old man was free, but before Belle could even say good-bye, the Beast dragged him away and he was whisked away in an enchanted carriage back to the village_."

"She must have hated him…"

Jane, startled out of the rhythm of her storytelling, turned her head and was caught in the magnetic pull of Loki's eyes. They were twin beacons of sullen defiance, his amusement forgotten, but the ill humor in them was little more than a transparent veneer over a troubled depth of guilt and frustration. It was clear he'd made the same connections she had. He couldn't seem to hold her eyes for longer than a few seconds, and looked away, his expression subdued.

"For a while," Jane allowed, and Loki blinked; apparently that hadn't been the answer he'd expected. His brow slowly unknotted before her eyes, and she hurried to pick up the thread of the story.

"_When the Beast returned to the tower, he found Belle crying. Moved for the first time by the pain of another person, the Beast gave her a room in the castle rather than keeping her locked in a cell, saying that she may go anywhere in the castle except for the west wing. Belle quickly locked herself in her room and refused to come out. Angry at her defiance, the Beast ordered the enchanted attendants to let her starve and shut himself away in the west wing. With his magic mirror, he looked into Belle's room and found her crying once more. He heard her swear that she would never have anything to do with him, and despaired. Belle was his last chance to break the spell, but he was certain that she could never love a monster like him."_

Jane had watched Loki grow more despondent as the tale progressed. It was hard not to wonder… could that really be how he saw himself? The answer was obvious from the expression of sympathetic sorrow on his face. She phrased her next words with careful intent.

"_The attendants blatantly ignored their master's orders..._"

Loki's brow snapped down in a hard vee as he was yanked out of his unhappy contemplation by his irritation at the mention of insubordination; Jane had to work to hard to keep from snickering at the easily anticipated reaction.

"…_and enticed Belle out of her room to explore. Unfortunately, Belle was an insatiably curious woman, and because the Beast had told her that the west wing was forbidden, that was the very first place she went. Sneaking inside, she found the rooms in a state of destruction, every portrait torn, every piece of furniture smashed. Her eye was drawn in short order to the beautiful red rose, blooming under a glass bell jar. It was the very same rose that the enchantress had given to the Beast. Belle was mesmerized by its beauty, and reached out to touch it."_

"_At that very moment, the Beast came upon her. Horrified to see her tampering with the cursed rose, he flew into a terrifying rage. In her fear of the Beast's temper, Belle broke her promise and fled the castle, running out into the night and quickly losing her way in the forest. Soon she was surrounded by the growling and the howling of the forest's ravenous wolves. Their hungry yellow eyes shone out of the trees at her, and Belle cowered in fear, waiting to be devoured. Just as the wolves would have leapt upon her and torn her to pieces, the Beast appeared before her. He had not meant to lose his temper with her, and in fear for her safety had followed her out into the freezing night. He defended Belle and fought off the entire wolf pack single-handedly, but though he won the battle, he was wounded in the fight."_

"_Grateful to him, Belle went with him back to the castle, where she tended his wounds, and thanked him for saving her life. His courage and selflessness had helped her see past his strange and monstrous appearance, and she could no longer see him as merely a savage beast."_

Loki was listening, she could tell by his stillness, but his eyes were distant, as though he were watching the scene play out inside his mind, though perhaps with different characters in each of the roles. Fidgeting at the intense weight of double-meaning that continued to accumulate around the story, Jane drew her legs up, scooting back so that she could sit next to him, facing him at an angle. Nervous, she began plucking absently at loose string on her pajama pants, wishing suddenly that she was wearing something more becoming. She'd always thought he was intimidating in his armor, but now she thought he looked regal and incredibly handsome. She looked like a complete slob next to him.

"_As the days passed into weeks, Belle began to spend time with the Beast, dining with him, walking with him in the castle gardens and reading books from his vast library with him. Soon the Beast, charmed by her sweetness, had fallen in love with her. His long-held anger abated when he was beside her, and he forgot about breaking the enchantment, seeking instead only to make her happy, for this is what it truly means to love another." _

She glanced up at Loki, then away again, blushing idiotically as she spoke the next words.

"_Little did he know that she had grown to care for him as well._" She caught movement out of the corner of her eye – Loki's eyes turning suddenly in her direction - and refused to look at him. _"She had not meant for it to happen, but had discovered that with his temper absent, he was thoughtful, funny, intelligent and charming."_

Jane almost added "handsome" to her list of adjectives before she realized she was unintentionally describing her own view of Loki and stopped while there was still a tiny speck of plausible deniability to her words, and before she could completely humiliate herself. Loki was shrewd; he'd made every one of the same connections that Jane had so far, between his situation and the story. It was almost too much to ask that he wouldn't see straight through her embarrassment to the truth of her feelings. She kept trying to remind herself that it was a dream, not real… but that line no longer worked on her. It was completely beside the point, because her feelings were completely real.

"_She no longer saw a beast when she looked at the Beast. She only saw the man that she had grown to adore."_

Unable to stand it anymore, she looked up. He was watching her, an unreadable expression on his face. Their eyes locked, as they had countless times before, but her heart thundered in her chest to watch the way his lips parted as he looked at her, and when his eyes flicked down to her own mouth, and a faint stain of color touched his cheeks, she was helplessly reminded of her fantasy of his lips pressing against her skin…

Jane cleared her throat loudly and jerked her head away as he mirrored her actions. His fingers were clenched tight in the folds of his cape that pooled around him. She was worried that she might actually give credence to cliché and faint. She sucked in a deep breath, closing her eyes to collect herself.

"_The night of the Beast's twenty-first birthday, Belle and the Beast dressed in their finest attire to celebrate. They descended into the ballroom, and danced together. And this is the song that they danced to…"_

She cleared her throat again and tried to shoot an amused glance at Loki, as though to say 'here's the part you were waiting for', but her wit seemed to glance off at a wrong angle. The air was too heavy to be light. So she gave in to the atmosphere, and sang.

"_Tale as old as time, true as it can be  
Barely even friends, then somebody bends  
Unexpectedly.  
_

_Just a little change, small to say the least  
Both a little scared, neither one prepared  
Beauty and the Beast..."_

Jane was proud of how steady her voice was. Really, it was like the song was tailor made to express her feelings, and even so, she silently begged whatever deity might be listening that he didn't make the connection. She had a feeling that multiple gods might be laughing at her.

"_Ever just the same, ever a surprise,  
Ever as before, ever just as sure  
As the sun will rise…"_

Okay, it was clear he had some idea about her affections now – the intensity of his gaze was too clear to be mistaken. She cursed inwardly, terrified of making him uncomfortable. All she could hope for was that he underestimated the depth of her feeling. Then they could go back to the way things were…

"_Tale as old as time, tune as old as song,  
Bittersweet and strange, finding you can change,  
Learning you were wrong…"_

Jane nearly bit down on her lip in frustration and embarrassment, as his shoulders straightened, his eyes wide with uncertainty and something else, something new that she was too frazzled to identify.

"_Certain as the sun, rising in the East,  
Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme  
Beauty and the Beast…  
_

_Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme,  
Beauty and the Beast."_

The song finished, Jane found herself blinking a little too rapidly down at the blades of grass in front of her. Now she did bite her lip, dizzy with adrenaline, almost drunk with the contradictory anxiety and longing at war inside her. The silence lengthened.

"Jane…"

Jane gasped as though he'd dumped a bucket of ice water on her, pulling a cold breath into her burning lungs.

"So anyway, that's the song I was humming," she said, her voice a little too high, too loud, too fast as she scrambled up off the lawn. "Pretty, right? One of my favorites, like I said, that must be why I was humming it when I saw you weren't here, it was, you know, comforting…" She cringed and resisted the urge to literally kick herself. She turned on point and fled. Her feet carried her directly over to one of the paint cans beside the hedge without her conscious direction. She dropped down to work on one of the lower blooms, nearly upending the paint can in her haste to take up the brush and occupy her hands and her mind.

She could feel him standing behind her a moment before he sat down next to her in that familiar posture, with his back against the hedge, facing her, so close that he was nearly directly across from her.

"How does the story end?" he asked softly.

He wasn't looking at her. His eyes were pointed straight ahead of him, and there was an extremely sober air about him. Jane decided she was reminded of a man walking to the gallows that had already resigned himself to death, and resisted the urge to tear a couple fistfuls of hair out of her head. She was a pathetic actor. He had to know exactly what she was thinking and feeling. She wanted to hide under a rock. She wanted to die of embarrassment. She wanted to beg him to forget. She wanted to beg him to kiss her.

Instead, she painted her roses and finished the story.

"_The Beast asked Belle if she was happy there with him. She told him that she was, but that she missed her father, and wished she could see him one last time. Wishing to please her, the Beast took her to his magic mirror. When she looked into it, she saw her father. But she was horrified to see that he was lost in the forest, weary and sick, on the point of collapse as he searched for her. Belle cried out in fear and anguish. The Beast, caring more for her happiness than for breaking the spell, told her to go to her father. Giving her the magic mirror to remember him by, he released her from her promise, knowing that in doing so he was dooming himself and his attendants to remain cursed forever."_

As Loki listened to all of this, his head slowly drooped and his shoulders slumped. His expression became weary. Defeated. He looked, Jane thought, as though he might actually be on the point of shedding tears.

"Of course," he murmured, visibly attempting to gather himself. "Typical."

A hard, sour note had entered his voice. Worried and embarrassed as she was, Jane didn't like it. It pulled her a little out of her own fugue and sharpened her tone.

"Do you want to hear this story or not?" she reiterated tartly. His eyes darted to hers, irritated, and under that, confused.

"Isn't that the end?" he snapped back. Jane narrowed her eyes. She didn't understand his change in attitude, but she found she was in no mood for it.

"No," she replied definitively and with feeling, somehow offended on behalf of Disney, Villeneuve, Beaumont, France, and humanity in general. "May I continue?"

"I…" Loki opened his mouth, then closed it, his anger turning to pure confusion. He looked like he was developing a headache. "… yes."

"Thank you," Jane muttered sarcastically, paradoxically relieved to be feeling anything other than overwhelming embarrassment and panic, then cleared her throat, and picked up where she left off.

"_Belle left the castle straight away, and, led by the magic mirror, quickly found her father and took him home. However, when they reached the house, they discovered that Gaston, still determined to have her for his bride, had gathered a mob of villagers. You see, they had not believed his fantastic tale of a Beast in an enchanted castle, and it had been a simple matter for Gaston to convince them that the old man was indeed insane, and should be locked away in an asylum. He told Belle that if she would agree to be his wife, he would send the mob away and her father would be safe."_

"_Belle, horrified and furious, refused him, and cried that she could prove that her father wasn't crazy. Using the magic mirror, she showed the villagers that the Beast was real. She insisted that he was kind and gentle, that she cared for him, but the ignorant villagers could see only his beastly appearance, and not the goodness of the man within. Gaston, in his jealousy and rage at seeing the love in Belle's eyes as she looked on the Beast's image, accused her of being as crazy as her father. He had the villagers lock her and her father in the cellar of their own home, and then led them to hunt down the Beast."_

Loki, his snide fury forgotten, was listening intently again. He was breathing a little too quickly, and there was a strange light in his eyes, but his agitation it wasn't directed at her.

"_Belle, determined to stop them, used her father's genius invention to break open the cellar doors, leapt upon her father's horse and rode after them. Meanwhile the villagers had reached the castle, and upon attacking it, found it well defended by the enchanted attendants, who frighten and confuse the dull-witted villagers and drove them away. Gaston, however, went his own way, and found Beast in the west wing, in a state of despair. He had given up ever seeing his love again, and did not defend himself when Gaston attacked him and threw him out onto the balcony overlooking the cliff on which the castle was built. But suddenly, he heard Belle's voice, calling out to him from far below – she had returned!"_

"_His spirit and his will to fight came rushing back, and he battled Gaston fiercely. They raged against one other, striking blow after blow, Gaston with blades, the beast with his claws and teeth. It was a terrible struggle, but at last, the Beast triumphed, and held Gaston's life in his hands. But his love for Belle had softened his heart, and when Gaston begged for his life, the Beast granted it to him, telling him to go and never come back. He turned away and found Belle standing there behind him, a look of pride and love on her face. But as he went to go to her, Gaston leapt up from the ground, drew a knife and plunged it into the Beast's back."_

Loki drew in a shocked breath, as though she'd just said something extremely vulgar. From what she knew of Asgardian ideas about honorable conduct in battle, perhaps she had.

"_In pain, the Beast lashed out and knocked Gaston away. The evil man flew over the railing of the balcony, and plunged to his death far below. Belle rushed forward as the Beast collapsed to the ground. His wound was mortal, and he was on the edge of death. Belle wept as the light left his eyes, saying that she loved him."_

Loki looked like he was in physical pain at the tragic turn of events, his head bowed, his expression aggrieved. Jane nearly smiled, the joy of storytelling returning by degrees as she misled him, eager to reach the end of the story.

"_If she had spoken even an instant later, it may have been too late."_

Loki looked up, surprised. The open, unaffected quality of his expressions when he was truly engulfed in a tale was absolutely enthralling. It was the only time his mask ever fully came off, and the transformation was delightful. She could watch him react to her words like this forever.

"_As it was, the words left her lips just a moment before the last petal of the enchanted rose fell. There was a great flash of light, so bright that it drove Belle back, and when it subsided, a handsome man that she had never met stood where the Beast had lain. His name was Prince Adam, and Belle saw when she looked into his eyes that he was indeed the Beast she had fallen in love with. The spell was broken, and all the inhabitants of the castle instantly regained their human forms. Belle and the Prince remained deeply in love; very soon after they were married."_

"And they lived happily ever after until the end of their days."

Jane couldn't help looking at up at him and giving him a sassy smile as she delivered the last line, as if to say 'so there, oh ye of little faith'.

He was staring at her again, stunned this time, and trying not to show it. He looked down, searching the grass in front of him. When he looked back up at her, his eyes had softened considerably, apparently against his will.

"That is the most outlandish story I have ever heard," he concluded.

"It's not outlandish at all," Jane said philosophically. She dipped her head and smiled, intensely relieved and achingly disappointed that he seemed to have forgotten the humiliating exposition of her emotions. "Didn't you listen to the song? It happens all the time."

Loki looked away, huffing out an agitated breath. He suddenly seemed incapable of sitting still. He ran a hand through his hair, tore at the grass, tugged on the bracers at his wrists and threw his head back against the hedge in frustration. He leapt to his feet so suddenly that Jane almost startled, and she heard him pacing away. Her relief and disappointment intensified.

_It's okay. This is how it should be. It's just a…_

He suddenly dropped down next to her once more. This time, he was facing the hedge. To her abject astonishment, he was carrying another paint can. He took up the brush it contained.

"Move over," he said between gritted teeth.

He glanced at her, rolled his eyes at her disbelief, his cheeks flushing a deeper red than she'd ever seen them, and, pursing his lips in irritation, reached across her body and began slathering paint rather indelicately on one of the white petals. Jane quickly scooted to her right, so that there was room for both of them to reach the rose without splashing paint all over each other.

"You don't need to use that much," she observed after her own moment of stunned silence. "It absorbs better if you use a light touch."

"You're the expert," he said sourly, but he was already growing less restless. The calm she had always known while painting the roses seemed to be stealing through him. He could feel the rightness of it too, she could tell. And as they painted the rose together, she felt the rightness of it only continue to increase.

"This is still ridiculous," he muttered, though there was no real heat in his voice.

"Then why are you doing it?" she asked innocently.

"Shut up," he groused.

Bemused, Jane could only turn her face into her shoulder to hide the wide, triumphant smile she couldn't seem to banish from her lips.

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* * *

TBC

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**A/n: **Could this be progress? Could Loki have had some kind of epiphany? Could Jane be any denser if her skull was made of pure lead? I wonder... But everybody who's anybody is painting roses now, tee hee! I don't even care if its a cheese fest anymore, you can't go wrong with Beauty and the Beast. So please stand by, more story will be along asap. And remember children, a muse needs a steady diet of reviews to stay healthy, active and relatively sober!


	8. Like A Prayer

**Disclaimer: **It's not mine, and it's not for sale. I wish it were, but if wishes were hammers, then beggars would fly. You know how it is.

**A/n: **Apparently the muse has been nefariously infecting innocent souls with non-stop Disney music; I figured the least I could do was take responsibility with another update.

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_**Chapter 7**_

_Like a Prayer_

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* * *

_In the midnight hour, I can feel your power,  
Just like a dream, you are not what you seem.  
Just like a prayer,  
No choice, your voice can take me there._

_-Madonna_

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* * *

Jane woke slowly, reluctant to surrender her sleep – or rather, her dreams.

When at last the waking world coalesced, the first sight that came into focus was the red rose by the window, gilt in a halo of early morning sunlight that seemed to glow with the same warmth that filled her chest as thoughts of Loki filled her mind.

Swarming memories of his face and his hands, his voice, his teasing, his smile, the emerald gleam of mischief in his flashing eyes… it threatened to overwhelm her before she was even fully awake. She closed her eyes and curl into a tight ball around that sweet aching pang in the center of her chest. She had never felt this way about anyone. Not even Thor.

It was pathetic, she tried to remind herself, to love a figment of her imagination. But she couldn't find it in herself to care. Thinking back on her panic the night before when she had sat in the garden alone, uncertain what to do and unsure if she would ever see him again… Thinking of it now with her waking mind sent a sickening bolt of adrenaline coursing through her system and tied her stomach in knots. The thought of never seeing him again wasn't merely unacceptable, it was unbearable.

Restless now, she climbed out of bed, drifting through her morning routine. She checked her phone, but there were no calls; maybe Thor hadn't returned from Asgard yet. Maybe he had, and hadn't thought to call. Or maybe he had and didn't want to call.

It was striking how little difference she felt about each of these scenarios – how little she felt about them at all.

Her spoonful of Cheerios paused halfway to her mouth as she considered it. Putting it back in the bowl, she sighed and rubbed at her eyes against a headache that was trying to begin somewhere just behind them.

Things couldn't go on like this.

Maybe it was for the best. Thor was the next thing to an immortal god, and she was only human. He would live practically forever – and someday, in spite of his current state of abdication, she was certain he would return to Asgard, be welcomed by the people that loved him, and rule the Realm Eternal as its wise and kind king, forever and ever. A fairytale ending. The thought put a warm smile on her face.

She cared deeply about Thor. And that was exactly why she couldn't keep stringing him along when she, mental-patient-in-training that she probably was, did not love him the way he deserved. The thought of giving him up authored a wistful ache in her chest, but it was, she acknowledged guiltily, nothing at all compared to the thought of losing Loki. Sad and abnormal as it sounded even in her own mind, she believed that she truly might be more happy living out the remainder of her relatively short time with the dead man in her dreams each night.

_What's normal? _she demanded of herself defiantly. She could only shake her head. _Not this. _But once again, she found herself caring less and less.

Her heart was clouding her head when she most needed to think. Shaking off her maudlin musing, she heaved a cleansing sight and turned her mind to other things. Depositing her bowl in the sink and grabbing a light sweater, she went to work through the floor of her utility closet.

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* * *

Tapping into the main power line had ensured an ample electricity supply, but Jane was reluctant to risk drawing attention to her little venture by plugging in a space heater alongside the Stark Industries supercomputer – she wasn't entirely certain which drew more voltage. She had, however, managed with the aid of a rope, to lower a couple of card tables, a folding chair and a few desk lamps down into the subbasement, and the boiler room was now adequately lit and comfortable enough, in spite of the chill.

Jane discovered upon her arrival in the basement lab that the triangulation program had completed its collection – _from outside the solar system! _she reminded herself triumphantly - and the data analysis was nearly complete. She smiled impishly, less giddy than yesterday, but no less pleased with herself. Resisting the urge to stop the program and peek at the incomplete report, she left the computer to finish its calculations and settled in with her equipment at the card table, where she was challenging herself to wind the converter/generator combination into smaller and smaller casings. A tiny piece of her wished she'd taken Tony Stark up on his offer of a spot on his R&amp;D team, working in his state of the art lab. What she wouldn't give right now for access to some decent micro-engineering equipment; she as sure, with enough time, she could engineer this technology down to the size of a computer chip.

Jane found herself humming absently as she worked, moving the tweezers and screwdriver in time to the song. Before long she recognized what she was humming. Deep down in the dark underground room, where no one would ever hear, she gave in and let herself sing in the waking world. Her voice was even rustier than in her dream, but it felt incredibly satisfying to sing. It made her feel closer to Loki.

_"I can show you the world, shining, shimmering, splendid! Tell me, Princess, now when did you last let your heart decide? I can open your eyes, take you wonder by wonder, over sideways and under on a magic carpet ride!"_

Loki would have known how to get this converter into a microchip. She squinted in the unidirectional light of the lamp. He'd probably just shrink it with magic, though. She wondered if his "magic" could have made a flying carpet…

_ "A whole new world!" _she sang on, _"A dazzling place I never knew. But when I'm way up here, it's crystal clear that now I'm in a whole new world with you!"_

Her hands occupied, Jane's thought wandered to Loki's descriptions of the other worlds he'd visited. Worlds of ice and fire, water worlds with cities in the clouds, worlds where crystals grew like forests and resonated to sing spontaneous symphonies at a single strike, worlds where the plant life roamed free, and the animal life put down roots. She was still in awe of his description of the world where the diphasal native life forms shed their physical forms and lived the second phase of their life as a form of coalesced plasma – real-live, naturally occurring ghosts.

_"Unbelievable sights, indescribable feeling, soaring, tumbling, freewheeling through an endless diamond sky!"_

Such a vast and varied universe out there, just waiting to be explored. Strange, then, that the place Jane wanted most to see was that valley hidden in the mountain forests of Vanaheim he once spoke of. The one with the huge golden eye flowers. She didn't even know if the place was real. No, she reminded herself sadly, how could it be, if her imagination had told her about it? And yet, she wanted it to be real with a desperation that almost terrified her.

_ "A whole new world, don't you dare close your eyes! A hundred thousand things to see! _

Thor to show her the universe, a poisonous little voice tempted her. He had the means, she was sure. Even if none of those places were real, there must be even more out there to see and explore. Not just imaginings and ideas. Real things. She didn't have to love him to stay with him for the benefits; people married for money or convenience all the time…

"_I'm like a shooting star! I've come so far! I can't go back to where I used to be!"_

And really, how could she go backwards? Doubt began to gnaw at her, pulling her onto uncertain ground. Was a dream really enough to sustain her, no matter how brief her life, no matter how limited she was as a human? Was she really ready to give up the possibility of seeing the universe, for the sake of a dream? She wasn't sure she could live with that.

But neither could she live with herself if she stayed with Thor only to use him for his access to space-ships and wormholes. Jane had proven in the past that she would go to lengths to satisfy her curiosity, but this was more than a few steps beyond her ability to rationalize in the name of science.

_ "A whole new world, every turn a surprise! With new horizons to pursue. I'll chase them anywhere! There's time to spare…"_

… but there wasn't time to spare. Every moment she wasted not chasing down the wonders of the universe was a moment she spent dying by inches, all the while barely having lived.

"_Let me share this whole new world with you."_

Strangely, she suddenly wondered if anyone had ever retrieved Loki's body from the Dark World. If he'd been given a beautiful funeral like his mother's, or if anyone had mourned his passing at all.

He filled her mind – the real Loki meshing and mingling with the Loki of her dreams. His tall, regal frame, the elegant motion of his hands as he launched a knife into a Dark Elf's eye socket, the slow, mischievous smile he wore when she caught him cheating at cards… the need to reach out and touch him, to feel her heart skip when his eyes caught sight of her and lit with recognition… it left her in an almost physical agony of want.

Was the real Loki even passingly the same as the Loki in her dreams? Had he been playful and stubborn and manipulative and charming? Had he been sarcastically witty and intriguingly intelligent? Had he hated to lose, enjoyed music and been proud of his ability with knife throwing, even though it wasn't supposed to be 'manly'? Could he have been capable of sending fire searing through her veins with a mischievous smirk and the barest sideways glance?

_ "A whole new world, that's where we'll be; a thrilling chase… a wondrous place… for you… and me…"_

The tweezers clattered to the checkered surface of the card table, which had blurred into runny red and white lines. Twin tears dropped from her eyes to splatter on the plastic surface, clearing her vision for an instant before more welled up. Something fragile and buried broke deep down inside of her. Shaking violently, Jane broke down in sobbing tears, mourning the death of the man she'd never known, and the life of the man who could never be real.

"Why can't you be real!" she wailed into her hands with all the passion of a desperate prayer. If only Loki really was a god; maybe he might have heard her.

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* * *

There was no telling how long she sat there sobbing out her frustration and sorrow. Only when she heard a loud, authoritative beeping from the computer was she pulled from her misery, like an alarm clock waking her from a nightmare. The analysis was done, and had clearly found something worth seeing, or it wouldn't have been alarming like that.

Pulling herself together, Jane abandoned the card table, scrubbing at her eyes, and made her way over to review the analysis report. Her eyes scanned over a wealth of predictable – but still fascinating – data sets, before they widened, then narrowed in disbelief.

"What the…" Jane sniffed back her tears, blinked the rest away and rescanned the data. "That's impossible…"

Shaking her head, she accessed her digital astronomical charts, inputting the coordinates specified by the readout. Visual representations of stars, asteroids and calculated planetary orbits flew across the screen as her fingers flew across the keyboard, linking up her analysis program. The coordinates narrowed onto Saturn as a visual representation of the anomalous readings became visible, a hazy halo of thermonuclear energy radiating from one of the moons.

"It's one of Saturn's moons…" she murmured to herself. "Titan…"

No wonder the data was had come back skewed. Power levels like these would affect the gravitational and magnetic fields of everything in the solar system, and for light years all around! There was no way it could be stable, and yet, the data set was remained consistent.

A cold knot of foreboding twisted the pit of her stomach into knots. She could think of very few possible explanations for this, and none of them were good. This had to be the secret SHIELD was trying to cover up. _Why? _ What was it? More than ever, she hated not knowing.

Biting her lip, she started a second analysis running on the new incoming data, then hurried over to her welding station and hefted another of her homemade probes. This one was fitted out with a thermal imaging camera with a trigger sensor, which she calibrated to the correct frequency to snap pictures of anything emitting an energy signature that high. She could read numbers all day, but a picture was worth a thousand words. She programmed the coordinates of the energy surge into the new guidance system she'd rigged into the probe's power supply, and with the press of a button and a flash of light, sent the probe off to Titan.

Plagued with fear and still aching with loneliness, Jane found as she blinked away the spots from her eyes that she could no longer bear to be underground. It could be hours or even days before the probe sent anything back, and she needed to see the sky.

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* * *

Jane was curled up on the couch with a mug of cocoa watching Mulan save China when there was a knock at the door. Since the knock came from the door to her rooftop balcony, she was pretty sure she knew who it was. That foreknowledge was all that kept her from wincing at the sight of Thor; by the time she turned to see him, framed by the late afternoon glow, peering in through the glass at her and offering her a tentative smile, she had carefully rearranged her face into something passing for neutral. Her first expression had been a wretched hybrid of guilt and panic.

Climbing to her feet, Jane took a deep breath and walked over to unlock the glass doors.

"Thor, I… mph!"

His lips were just suddenly _there_, his strong fingers twining in the hair at the base of her skull, his other hand tracing over the curve of her hip to pull her close, and he was kissing her like he was drowning and she was air. Maybe it was the spontaneity of it, or that Thor was an excellent kisser, or that between her dreams and her fantasies she had become increasingly sexually frustrated, but when Thor pulled back to smile wistfully down at her, she discovered that the world was spinning slightly and her knees had gone weak. She swallowed hard. She couldn't seem to remember what she'd been about to say.

"Um… hi," she tried.

"Hello," he said gently, pushing past her and drawing her after him back into the flat. "I cannot stay, Jane, but I needed to see you. So much has happened in such a short time… and…" he turned to run a hand over her hair, tracing her jaw with a familiar fondness. "Norns… I feel like we haven't talked since…"

"Since you raided my lab with your goon squad?" Jane's felt an icy little prickle of gratitude towards Thor for the reminder as her mind cleared, and her heart cooled and hardened. She turned and walked a few steps away, taking a deep breath to collect herself. She was still confused, unsure what she wanted, but she was sure that she didn't want to fight.

She heard him sigh heavily behind her.

"I know things have been difficult these past weeks. For both of us." He sounded tired, deeply tired, in a way Jane had never heard before. A twinge of worry went through her. "You have every right to be angry. But... things won't always be easy. And I feel… Jane, I fear that we are growing apart."

When she turned towards him, surprised, he was right behind her, his body close and familiar and warm and _real _and…

"I do not want us to grow apart," he murmured, and captured her lips again.

"Mmm…" Jane sighed as her body weathered a second jolt of adrenaline and endorphins and whatever other neurochemicals were responsible for making this feel so good.

Sly green eyes flashed like lightening through the front of her mind; she gasped, breaking the kiss, praying that Thor mistook the pained breathlessness for passion.

It was one thing to be alone for weeks, her only happiness coming from a dream man – an intense, mischievous, elegant, manipulative, charming, confounding, fascinating, infuriating, irresistible dream man – but with Thor here, now, alive and real, touching her, kissing her…

And he could show her the stars.

_I care about Thor. I waited for him. I could make a life with him. A real life. I could learn to love him the way he loves me… _

Torn between her heart and her head, she searched his eyes.

"If you really mean that…" she said softly, tentatively, uncertain, "…tell me what you have been keeping from me?"

Thor's tender expression stiffened and cooled around the edges. He opened his mouth, then closed it. Jane teetered on the knife's edge of his answer.

"I…"

"What is it, Thor?" she prompted, hope and surprise warring with edge of excitement and something like terror.

He turned away. He cleared his throat. Then he turned back to her and smiled disarmingly, and something in Jane wilted.

"It is nothing you need to concern yourself with, Jane. That isn't why I'm here."

Hope drained away, leaving her cold.

_My heart wants Loki, but I can't have him. My head wants Thor, but I can't trust him._

"Then why are you here?" she asked him flatly.

At that, Thor looked away, surveying the room, avoiding her eyes, clearly stalling. His gaze fell on a red rose in a vase on the coffee table and his brow furrowed. Walking around the couch, he crouched beside the rose, studying it pensively.

"This is rose, is it not?"

Jane frowned, her stomach tightening with a fluttery frisson guilt and a strange, irrational possessiveness. That rose was… private. It wasn't for him.

"Yeah, it is," she said, crossing her arms defensively, then uncrossing them, and planting her hands on her hips, then dropping them to her sides in a belated attempt to appear at ease. "Why?"

"They don't have any mind altering properties, do they?" he asked, reaching out tentatively, his fingers hovering above the outermost petal while Jane internally quailed and restrained herself from dashing over to snatch the flower out of his reach. "Some venom in the thorns? Or the pollen?"

Rattled by the odd turn of the conversation, Jane moved around the couch to stand beside him. "Nothing like that," she assured him. "Why…"

"And the color?" he interrupted. "Is the color significant?"

Jane opened her mouth, then closed it, fidgeting with increasing discomfort at the uncannily pointed questions. Where was this coming from?

"On Earth… I mean, of course on Earth, they don't grow any where else… do they? No… um… the color of a rose is symbolic."

"I see," Thor nodded as though that made more sense than she understood. "Tell me, what is the significance of a white rose?"

"Um… well…" bewildered and plagued by a strange sense of foreboding, Jane sank down on to the couch. "White roses are for purity, innocence and… um… secrecy."

"I see," he repeated, his voice uninflected. "And…" his fingers brushed that outermost petal of the flower between them and Jane shivered. "…what of the red?"

"Red roses… signify…" Why was she blushing all of a sudden? "…romantic love." She cleared her throat as Thor looked up at her sharply, and her heart stuttered in her chest and began to pound. "Thor what is this all about?"

"It is about my father."

"Your father?" Jane blinked, startled. That… wasn't what she'd been expecting, she realized. She'd thought... _Of course he doesn't know about my dreams! _ Jane scolded herself. But for a moment there…

"I am concerned for him."

Her brow furrowed. All trace of desire was gone now, and her anxiety faltered, replaced by worry and an old, gut-churning chill that she associated with the death of her own father.

"What's wrong? Is he alright? He's not sick, is he?"

"No, no," Thor assured her as he moved around and lowered himself onto the sofa beside her; it seemed too small for him, she realized for the first time, and he didn't look comfortable there. "My father is…" He grimaced and looked down, sighing again. "Physically, he seems fitter and more vigorous than I have seen him in centuries. Even so… he is not himself, Jane."

"Well… he's been through a lot," Jane ventured. "He's… lost a lot."

"So I thought as well. Father was shaken deeply by Mother's death." Thor shook his head. "But no, it is more than that. His commands, his moods, his conversation… even the way he moves has changed. His visage has not altered, and yet I hardly recognize him any longer. After Mother's funeral, he was so terribly bitter, and that was bad enough. But then he became… impulsive, almost reckless. Almost as though he were testing the trust of his advisers and generals. Of late he has become despondent, almost disinterested in the rule of the realm. I worry for him, yet in spite of it all, I was not truly troubled. Until this morning. Last night, I made a request of him…"

At Jane's look of renewed interest he glanced away guiltily, and Jane felt her expression fall, knowing that it had something to do with the secrets he was keeping. And more than likely, the mysterious energy readings from Titan. Even now, as she comforted him in his distress, he was determined to keep her in the dark.

"It was not such a steep request, all things considered," Thor went on, "but he adamantly refused it. Tyr and Bragi, two of his royal advisers, took up my cause alongside me, and we pleaded with him late into the night, but to no avail. He became agitated as we pressed him, but remained utterly unmoved. And so I thought the matter closed." Thor sighed, shaking his head, as though unable to believe the next words out of his mouth. "And yet this morning, he summoned me to him and after some discussion… he granted a compromise."

Jane tilted her head, waiting for the other shoe to fall. When Thor remained silent, she raised a dubious eyebrow at him.

"And that's a bad thing?"

"He has _never _rescinded a command," Thor explained, slashing his hand through the air expansively to emphasize his point, "Not _once_ in living memory."

"You mean, he's never changed his mind?" Jane asked, dryly disbelieving. She raised a skeptical brow. "As in, _never_?"

She almost gave into the urge to smirk and say something teasing, but bit her lip, realizing with a sinking feeling that that was how she would have reacted to Loki in this sort of situation to lighten his mood. She had no idea how Thor would react; she was forced to admit that she had no idea how best to comfort Thor.

Instead she rose and went to the kitchen to make Thor a cup of cocoa in an effort to distract herself.

"Never," Thor confirmed, completely serious from his place on the couch. "I learned from Sif and Fandral that it wasn't the first time, but…"

"It sounds to me like he slept on it and realized he was being unreasonable."

"You do not understand, Jane!" Thor interjected sternly, shaking his head, "Perhaps that is the way of human rulers, or perhaps you are too young to fathom it. Odin has ruled as the All Father for thousands of years. He knows his subjects, his kingdom and his own mind. He has no need to rescind his orders, because his orders are always right the first time."

"That's not what you said when I was infected with the Aether," Jane said, irritation animating her voice as she returned to the couch. Did he have to treat her like a child every time he didn't agree with her opinion? She thrust the mug of hot chocolate in Thor's direction and sat back down to take up her own. He took a sip of the drink, then set it aside. "You told me then that he doesn't know everything."

Thor blew out a beleaguered breath through his nose and rubbed his forehead, as though he were experiencing equal frustration with her.

"It's _different_, Jane," he insisted. "I _know _my father. And the father that I know is… changed." Thor looked down, shaking his head, his eyes distant and troubled. "I know it must sound insignificant, but he has become increasingly eccentric, and taken together it paints a very strange picture."

"Eccentric how?"

"They say he has taken to secluding himself in the upper towers, experimenting with transformational magics. When he's not quartered in his tower, he is walking abroad. He's traveled off world more times in the past two months than in the past two centuries, for no apparent purpose other than to _explore_. He has been seen mooning over the golden eyes in the garden."

Jane choked on her cocoa. She coughed for a moment and shook her head at Thor's look of concern.

"Wait, wait, golden eyes?" she wheezed. "Those are…"

…_real?_

"Er… they are a flower that grows on Asgard and Vanaheim," he elaborated dismissively. "Jane, I did not believe my father even knew where the palace gardens _are_. Such changes may be common amongst Midgardians, but on Asgard it is almost unheard of." Thor shook his head. "I do _know _that it sounds like a small thing, but this is not how my father behaves. I have never seen him so… so…"

Jane realized she was blinking too rapidly, and made an effort to slow down. A thought was trying to enter her head. One that she didn't know how to deal with.

"Thor?" she said, her voice tremulous. She had to ask. For all sorts of reasons.

"It would be something of a relief to believe it is nothing," he went on, oblivious. "I doubt not that such a devastating loss must change even one such as my father. Perhaps he truly does pine for my mother so desperately that he forgets himself. But even if that is the case, I have to wonder… Jane?" he interrupted himself, giving her a worried look. "Are you well?"

Jane twitched her head up to look Thor in the eye – hers felt very wide and dry, and she realized she had stopped been blinking altogether.

"Thor… is it true… that golden eye flowers produce a fruit that makes people immortal?"

Thor blinked in surprise, and then his brow drew down as his face darkened with indignation and something close to guilt.

"Who told you about the golden apples?" he asked.

Jane's world started to tilt on its axis. _Who told me…? _She shook her head vigorously.

"Why didn't _you _tell me about them!" she demanded. "Did it never occur to you that… that…"

Thor sighed. "You must understand, Jane," he said placatingly, his voice a mixture of exasperation and regret. "It is not that I would choose to withhold long life from you. Rather, I fear to risk it." He reached out to touch her face, a soft expression crossing his proud features. It was a feat of pure willpower that kept her from jerking away from his touch. "The golden apples bestow vigor and long life, but in some frailer, sicklier children, they have been known to act as a deadly toxin."

"And because I'm human…"

"No one knows what would happen if a Midgardian ate a golden apple. They could extend your life, or they could kill you on the spot. If I were to lose what little time we have left together on such a gamble..."

"You don't decide whether to gamble with my life," she said, the tone of her voice deadly serious and more threatening than if she had been screaming at him. "You don't get to decide what risks I take. I do."

"It is not wise, Jane," Thor, all conciliatory concern, turned towards her, reaching for her hand. "But… if you want to try it, we could…"

"No, you're missing the point!"

Jane did pull out of his reach this time and turned away. Her heart was racing, and there was a strange, half-formed question tugging at the edge of her attention…_who told me…_ but she was suddenly furious, and this was one thing that she had needed to say for a long time, and the way things were going, she might not get another chance.

"You once said that you were wrong to try to protect me from the dangers of your world," she all but hissed at him. "But that's all you've been doing ever since the Convergence. Keeping things from me for my own good? The golden apple isn't even the issue…" Though even as she said it, she knew that it _was_ an issue, a major issue, plucking a string of deep, mortal fear that every human who faces the brevity of their own lives must learn to resonate with; to have kept the choice from her was a bitter blow. "…it's whatever is going on with you that you are refusing to tell me about! It's all the secrets!"

"My oath…"

Jane whipped her head around and silenced him with the force of her glare.

"Your oath! I feel like I don't know you anymore Thor, but I know you well enough to know that if you wanted to, you'd find a loophole in it. You always have. The first time SHIELD stole my life's work, you stormed their facility to get it back. This time, you were helping them pack! What _happened_ to you?"

"YOU NEARLY DIED!" Thor thundered so abruptly that Jane actually jumped back a little.

He leapt up off the sofa to tower over her, larger than life, the power of the storm barely restrained, fairly radiating from him. Jane sucked in a breath and shrank reflexively against the cushions. He stood there breathing harshly for a long moment, before squeezing his eyes shut and running a hand over his face.

"Thor…"

"The Destroyer, the Aether, Malekith... Loki... Jane , how many times did you come within a hair's breadth of death's grasp?" he demanded hotly, turning to pace away from her. "How many times did you feel its icy breath on your neck because you were involved with me, with my people, with my duty to protect the realms?" His fists clenched tight at his sides. "You would never have met such danger if not for me. It is my duty to keep you safe."

Jane swallowed hard against the lump of alarm in the back of her throat.

"Thor, I'm alive," she said slowly, marveling at Thor and this side of him that he'd never shown her. _I really don't know him at all…_ "I'm fine. You don't have to keep me in the dark to protect me. And you're not responsible for anything that might have happened to me. I made my own choices. I don't regret them."

"Oh, Jane," Thor sighed, turning back to her. He went down on one knee in front of her – even kneeling, he still towered over her. "You are brave beyond measure. But you should not have to be. You are kind, and gentle, and sweet, and clever. You are a treasure. And you are so fragile. You are not meant for such harshness. You should be allowed to work with your sciences and your wonders, forever untroubled, never subjected to such dangers and hardships."

The word _fragile_ hurt; it was as though he saw her as some kind of porcelain doll to be displayed on a pedestal, rather than someone as real and strong and capable as himself…

_Of course he can't see me that way_, she thought bitterly, looking at Thor as though for the first time, seeing the might, the strength, the sheer power that radiated from him, with new eyes. _How can he see me as an equal, when I'm _not_ his equal in so many ways? He may love me, he may even respect me, but we're too different to…_

_He'll never be able to trust me, any more than I can trust him._

She faced the man in front of her squarely, and Thor looked squarely back at her, but she knew he didn't really see her, because somehow, for all his strength, he was shadowed with the same insecurity she had been feeling all this time. It was incomprehensible that she could have the power to hurt someone so indestructible. As though a leaf blowing in the wind could knock over a mountain.

"Why are you here, Thor?" The question had so many meanings, and even she didn't know which she wanted him to answer.

Thor looked down then back up, trying to smile and failing.

"Perhaps my father truly is merely heartsick with the loss of my mother," he said, his voice subdued. "Perhaps he will remember himself in time. But I cannot stand on hope. So… I have come to tell you now: if my father becomes unfit to rule…"

"You have to return to Asgard," she finished for him, looking down. "For good."

"I hope it will not be so for many years to come," he answered, a hard note of resolve in his voice. "But if it comes to it, I cannot leave my people leaderless. And when that time comes… I know you are furious with me right now, but I want you to consider…" He took her hands in his. "You have said you are not ready for marriage. While I do not pretend to understand this… Jane, if I must go, I want you to come with me."

Jane froze, staring up at him. All her earlier indecision came rushing back to replace righteous anger with cold, sickening uncertainty. _My heart wants Loki, but I can't have him. I can have Thor, but I can't trust him._

_He can show me the stars._

_We'll never see eye to eye._

_I could learn to love him._

… _who told me about the golden apples?_

"Thor… I…"

Whatever he had saw in her face made his eyes tighten with pained uncertainty of his own.

"Do not answer now," he entreated. "This not a decision to be made in haste. Take time to think on it. Whatever answer you give… I would have you be certain."

Abruptly he stood and swept away towards the door, leaving her there cold, alone and confused. A thousand questions swirled through the confusion and doubt, pulling her in more directions than she knew how to deal with. She sat staring blankly as he walked away from her. After a moment, she realized that her eyes were trained on the red rose on the coffee table.

"Thor, why did you ask me about roses?" she asked. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears.

Thor turned back, his brow furrowing. "Ah, er… it was nothing. Just something my father said to me in the garden this morning. That the golden eyes should be red."

Jane looked up at him sharply.

"He said... they should be red?"

Thor nodded, nonplussed. "Yes, those words exactly. 'They should be red.' Golden eyes are white flowers, so I thought the sentiment strange. When I asked him what he meant, he dismissed it as a whim, saying that I should ask a Midgardian sometime about their preoccupation with red roses." He shook his head sadly. "He is simply not himself."

At the door, he paused, hefting Mjolnir from where he'd left it on the balcony. He looked back at her, and his smile was heart-rending.

"Here, or on Asgard, my fondest wish is to be with you," he said, a shadow of his usual confidence ringing through the unaccustomed melancholy in his gaze. "Consider it Jane. Please."

There was a _whoosh _of wind that scattered the magazines on the coffee table, and then he was gone into the fading purple-pink of the sunset sky.

.

* * *

Jane sat very still for what seemed like a very long time before she walked over to the door and closed it. In the sudden silence, every little sound seemed extremely loud. She wandered back over to the sofa in a daze. Mulan was still saving China on mute. Jane switched off the TV.

And, very carefully, began to examine her thoughts.

"They should be red," she repeated, her voice barely a breathy whisper. "And… who told me about the golden apples?"

The fog lifted, and her thoughts swarmed at her all at once.

_Loki can create illusion…_

_Golden eyes are real… _

_Odin thinks the roses should be red… _

Jane's sat down hard.

It couldn't be. It couldn't.

"_I have everything I always wanted in life. I am king of a prosperous and beautiful land, with the respect and adoration of my subjects. And everyone who doubted or betrayed me in life now bows to me and obeys my every command. My every ideal has been realized._"

No. No, she'd seen him die with her own eyes.

"_Illusion is child's play."_

It was all just a dream…

"_Why are you invading my dreams, Jane Foster?"_

No… Surely the Asgardians would realize if their king had been replaced…

But wasn't that what Thor had just said? That many of them _had _noticed a change in their king? _"He is simply not himself."_

"_I've been fooling people since I was an infant."_

She could feel herself starting to hyperventilate, and she took a deep slow breath against the dizziness that was more than just a lack of oxygen.

True information that she couldn't possibly know on her own, arising in a dream. Imagery from a dream appearing in real life. All that nonsensical theory Loki had expounded about magic, from which she'd gleaned the information for making her converters more efficient… had he not mentioned magic joining far distant points in space and time…? Not only that, the little things, the games she'd never heard of, the places he described in such detail, the authenticity of him, his memories, his depth, his whole self, the _presence _she felt with her in the dreams, and the absence she'd felt when he was gone…

Jane didn't want to believe it. Because it couldn't be true. Because it scared her how much she wanted it to be true. Because it would change _everything_.

Yet even as she struggled to rationalize it, her eyes slid closed, her shaking hands curling into tight fists at her sides as though trying to hold onto the last fading shadow of a doubt. Twin tears rolled down her cheeks as a pained smile of unbearably painful hope broke over her face.

Because she knew it, had probably known it all along, this impossible truth that had hidden so long in plain sight, deep down, not with her mind, not even with her heart, but something deeper down, deep in the core of her being _knew… _

"Oh…" she whispered. "You're real."

She covered her face with her hands and cried.

.

* * *

**TBC**

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* * *

**A/n: **Uh-oh, shit just got real, in various ways. Remember, reviews are muse food!


	9. Poison

**Disclaimer: **The original plots, characters, lyrics and all the other best toys still belong to MCU and Disney, the muse and I are just sneak in after they go to bed and play with them.

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* * *

**_Chapter 8_**

_Poison_

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* * *

_I wanna love you, but I better not touch  
I wanna hold you, but my senses tell me to stop  
I wanna kiss you, but I want it too much  
I wanna taste you, but your lips are venomous poison  
You're poison running through my veins  
You're poison, but I don't wanna break these chains…_

_-Alice Cooper_

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* * *

Jane stared at the scrolling numbers of the rapidly compiling data sets without really seeing them. At a loss as to what else to do, she had retreated into the boiler room to check on the data download, in hopes that concentrating on her work would lend some perspective to her thoughts. It was a lost cause. It felt like her brain was made up of a thousand little moving parts, each of them trying to turn independently of the rest, so that nothing would process beyond the world shaking paradigm shift that had just fractured her reality.

_He's real. He's real. He's real. _

It still didn't seem possible. She had _watched_ him die, watched him go pale and still in Thor's arms, watched him grow smaller and smaller each time she looked back to over the desert plain to where they had left him lying on the dark sands of that desolate world.

On the other hand, the more she thought about it, the more it seemed not only possible, but obvious. So what if she had seen him die? Not fifteen minutes before, she had watched him lop off Thor's hand as well. It had been a perfectly, terrifyingly believable illusion. Why couldn't he have faked his own death, as easily as he'd faked a severed hand? And taken objectively, why shouldn't he? He had nothing to go home to except a jail cell; means and motive established, it made such perfect sense that she was actually a little embarrassed that she hadn't figured it out sooner.

Besides, the real mystery was not how he could be alive, but how he could be inside her dreams. How was it even possible that they were communicating this way? Was it some sort of telepathy or alien technology? She didn't understand it. _He probably would._ A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth to imagine the magic lecture she might receive if she asked him. _So typical…_

It made her chest ache with longing to see him; a bittersweet blow, as it dragged her inevitably down into the thornier realities of where this left her. Because once one got past the how's and why's, there was the stark reality of the situation to consider.

Loki was alive.

Her first reaction had been emotional, overwhelmed, overjoyed and nearly overcome with something very much like gratitude. The man she cared for wasn't dead or false or imaginary, he was _real _and _alive. _And that meant that all of the wondrous places he had described might be real too, even the valley on Vanaheim full of huge white flowers. And it meant that someday she might be able to meet him in the waking world, see his smile with her waking eyes, take his outstretched hand in hers, touch him, and be touched by him...

But the other shoe had fallen soon enough, and Jane's second reaction had been soberingly rational.

The person she was in love with was _Loki_. _The _Loki. The trickster, the god of mischief, the man that had tried to conquer her planet. An infamous liar. A manipulator of literally legendary proportions. He was a fugitive who had done _terrible_ things.

Acknowledging it forced her to entertain a disturbing possibility. What if he had created the dream for a purpose? What if this was all part of some elaborate scheme? Was he tricking her, getting inside her head only to hurt her, or worse, to use her to hurt others? To hurt Thor?

Jane didn't want to believe it. She'd grown to like him, trust him and... yes, to love him. She'd seen him smile, witnessed him cry, cringed as he lost control of his temper, listened to him laugh until he couldn't breathe. No one was _that _good a liar, and if he was, she would rather be caught playing the fool than let that level of suspicion poison her heart. Maybe it was a fool's hope, but she needed to believe that the man she knew in her dreams was more than just an empty façade.

The trouble was, she wasn't entirely certain she could. At the very least, he almost certainly knew that the dreams were real…

"_Now, __Jane Foster, tell me why you have been invading my dreams"_

…and sometimes, he forgot that she didn't…

"..._I should take you there sometime…"_

...and he had kept it from her.

_"I am dead Jane. You would do well to remember it."_

... and that was a betrayal in itself. The ache in her chest deepened, complicated by a twinge of hurt. He could have told her the truth. But he'd never once alluded to it, at least not on purpose, playing heavily on her belief that he was gone. Jane recalled with uneasy clarity his angry insistence that she remain ever mindful that he was dead, and that she should not spoil the dream by pretending otherwise. Clearly she was meant to go on believing it indefinitely. It stung.

Of course, it wasn't very hard to see why he'd kept her in the dark; to keep his freedom, Loki had to remain a dead man beyond a shadow of a doubt. Not to mention, if Loki had taken Odin's place, then... where was Odin? The thought invaded her like a chill until a cold foreboding that clenched deep in her gut made her sure she didn't want to know. And afraid that she already did.

_I should tell someone…_ she realized suddenly, breath stilling in her chest. _I should t__ell Thor… _

If Loki had done something unforgivable - _something else unforgivable, _she amended internally with a shiver - she knew that the right thing to do would be to expose him. She also knew, a heartbeat later, that she wasn't going to. _Not before I have all of the facts._ And even then… the idea of betraying the man she knew in her dreams was all but unthinkable.

But then, who _was_ the man in her dreams? Loki – the _real _Loki, the Loki of the waking world – had always been a villain in her mind; a faceless monster, then an otherworldly menace, then briefly an untrustworthy ally. She had put these facts aside when she met him in her dreams, believing that the past no longer mattered for a dead man. In doing so, she had learned a completely different side of him. A side that had taken root and pierced deep into her heart.

But now he was once more alive. That meant that the Loki who had tried to kill Thor, attacked Jotunheim and nearly leveled Manhattan had to be taken back into consideration.

Didn't he?

How was she supposed to reconcile the monster in her memory with the man in her dreams? How could they be the same person?

_"When I was a king, I trusted to power and it was my unmaking... I trusted love and it was my downfall... I could see nothing but masters and slaves... users and used..."_

Jane's teeth clenched tight and she shook her head. That wasn't the whole story. He'd said so himself.

_"Now all I feel is empty. Master's, slaves... I can't see the difference any longer."_

Even that wasn't true though. The man she had come to know was anything but empty; in fact if anything, he was overflowing with passion, curiosity and ambition. He wasn't empty, just wounded. _Who is he who is he really? Right now?  
_

"_Now? __Now I've become a sentimental fool."_

Recalling the way he looked when he said those words made her heart skip in her chest, and then begin to race. Pained, perplexed, resigned with a knife's edge of self-deriding hope... what did he mean when he'd said that? If she wondered who he was, then even more... she wondered what he thought. What he... felt.

_I wanted to leave Thor and devote myself only to him, and that was when I thought he was nothing but a a figment of my imagination... now..._She felt her face flame scarlet as a warmth permeated her from the core of her chest outward, washing back the chill inside her in a wave of molten longing. She dragged a hand over her face, struggling inwardly. It was crazy. This was _Loki _she was pining over, mastermind, murderer, conqueror. Knowing that, how could she still feel this way?

Even so, these doubts were pointless. Because he was _Loki, _the man that had won her heart. He was like a drug poisoning her blood, already under her skin, inside her veins, seeping in down into her very bones, and no matter how destructive it might be, she craved him. Whatever her confusion or misgivings, her feelings hadn't changed. However little she understood, whatever he'd done, whoever he really was, and whatever she didn't know... she knew enough to know that she wanted to know more. And more and more and more. She wanted to discover every part of him... she wanted... she wanted...

She thought of the rose blooming by the window in her bedroom.

_I want..._

Roses, as she'd told Thor, were more than just a flower. They were a symbol in the human psyche. And the symbolism of her dream was now unmistakably clear. The roses were white, for secrecy and innocence, like the games they played to pass the time in the privacy of their own little world, learning to see each other clearly while sheltered by the deception of his death from the fracturing forces of reality. It was only as Jane had fallen for Loki that she had begun to paint them red.

For love.

Now, for all his reticence, Loki was painting them too.

Her blush deepened. Was she deluding herself with fragile, desperate hope, seeing what she wanted to see, rather than what was really there? She feared the possibility… but she didn't think so. A painfully wonderful ache twisted under her breastbone so sweetly that her eyes fluttered closed and her breath escaped her in a gust.

"But what now?" she whispered to the cobwebs and shadows, opening her eyes again like little slits, peeking back out at an uncertain reality she wasn't sure she could trust. How did she tell him that she knew he was alive? How would he react. She liked to think it would be a relief but what if... _he didn't want me to know... he was able to let me in because he felt safe... safe knowing that he was nothing but a dream to me... if I take away that anonymity... _would he pull away? Break off contact? _Leave me...?_

But how could she keep something like this to herself? It wasn't just longing or curiosity, even though those would burn a hole in her for certain if she didn't unleash; it was that she wanted to understand where she stood with him. And she needed to know what, if anything, he wanted from her. And then there was... well, everything else. Feelings and wishes were one thing, but she had practical complications and consequences of their connection to the rest of the world to consider...

Didn't she?

"What do I do?"

As though in reply, a yawn broke abruptly into her thoughts. Roused from her daydreaming, she frowned at the screen as she realized she had been reading the same line of data over and over without really seeing, much less comprehending it. Scrubbing at her eyes, she summarily gave up on the pretense of analyzing the scrolling numbers. The information wasn't complete yet in any case, she would just have to rerun the data algorithms once the information had finished trickling in, so until then, sitting here analyzing incomplete data sets was nothing but busy work.

If she was going to engage in escapism, she might as well enjoy it. With a sigh she rose, shutting off the lights, and left the computer running its decryption sequence while she retreated up the ladder to do something more productive, like eat ice cream and watch the Little Mermaid, anything to get her mind off of the bittersweet tension of hope and fear that had her drawn tight as a bowstring, and delay her dreams just a little bit longer.

.

* * *

Moments after she disappeared up the ladder, the computer beeped, and a series of grainy images popped up on the screen.

What they showed would have provided Jane with all the distraction she could have hoped for.

.

* * *

All of her diligent worrying notwithstanding, Jane found herself still mired in indecision as the garden materialized around her that night. She peered around and found, at first, that Loki was nowhere to be found. His absence stabbed at her with an uncomfortable spike of anxiety, but she swiftly realized that the music of the flowers was not the only song that reached her ears. Stepping softly, she moved carefully to peek around a nearby topiary.

Loki stood before an immaculately blooming rose on the hedge, humming quietly. He was back to his casual clothes, and his eyes were lidded and distant, as though he were only half there. He was painting. Jane drew back into the shade of the foliage, then peeked carefully around the border of the leaves to watch him, mesmerized. His eyes were focused with fascination upon the way his brush spread the red blush over the white petals, his lips parted slightly, his expression very nearly serene. Her heart skipped in her chest.

_He's real. _

Jane recognized the tune he was humming long before a few lines of the song murmured from his lips.

"…_just a little change, small to say the least…" _he sang quietly, "_…both a little scared, neither one prepared, beauty and the beast…"_

He applied the last stroke, staining the last petal crimson, then straightened and rocked back, slowly lowering his brush. A small, warm, thoughtful smile curved his mouth gently, tempting Jane as he reached up with his free hand to caress the full red petals.

"…_bittersweet and strange, finding you can change…" _he sang, almost in a whisper, "…_learning you were wrong…"_

Jane's chest constricted and she closed her eyes tight against the urge to do something rash. Like walk up from behind and put her arms around him… trace her fingers over his singing lips the way he traced his fingers over the rose petals… press a kiss between his shoulder blades, or against the palm of his hand, or along the line of his neck exposed by the fall of his hair… Jane's fingers curled into a tight fist as she fought to rein herself in.

Collecting herself around a series of slow deep breaths, she stepped back and made her way around the topiary, taking care to make noise as she walked this time. She was still confused and uncertain, but she couldn't hide. Not only would it not do any good... she didn't want to hide from him. She wanted to be closer. She knew the pull of his nearness as a moth knows the incandescent lick of a flame, helplessly drawn to him, even if it might mean her destruction.

Loki's eyes lit up and lifted to meet hers as he turned towards the sound of her approach.

"Jane," he said, and her heart swelled with the pleasure and welcome he wove into the sound of her name.

And in an instant she knew that she did not have it in her to confront him.

Not yet. When she told him what she knew, there was a very real chance that it would destroy everything that had grown between them. She could think of nothing at the moment, absolutely nothing, that was worth the risk losing that look in his eyes.

"Hey," she said, her voice warm, almost shy. She made to move towards him, but her stride faltered as she watched his eyebrows rise as he took her in, his expression sobering.

"I have not seen you wear that in quite some time."

Jane blinked and tore her eyes away from him to look down and find herself dressed once more in the blue Asgardian gown from that day on the Dark World, plate armor and all. Her gut clenched and she felt the blood drain from her face. So much for hiding her insecurities; apparently her subconscious had decided that it would not be so readily suppressed as her conscious concerns. She'd unwittingly come dressed for a battle, just like Loki had yesterday; strangely, standing in front of him in this formal dress made her feel more nakedly exposed than her tatty old Mickey Mouse pj's ever had.

"Um..." she shrugged lamely, searching her brain frantically for some explanation he might believe.

Whatever Loki saw in her face brought a subtle change over his own features; to anyone else, he might have appeared unchanged, but Jane could see it, sense it, in the minute tightening of his mouth and the millimeter narrowing of his eyes.

"Is all well?" he asked her slowly, guardedly echoing her concerns from the night before.

Feeling like a mouse frozen in the shadow of a hawk, her mouth opened and closed and opened again rather stupidly before she managed to clamped it shut and nod.

"I'm fine," she managed with unconvincing nonchalance.

His eyebrows shot up at her antics, and she helplessly watched him retreat behind an invisible wall of suspicion. He paced slowly towards her, his head cocked to one side, eyes sharp as he searched hers.

"You don't seem fine," he said quietly.

Through her mounting trepidation, she could almost see the wheels turning in his head. A flutter of panic assailed her. It was on the tip of her tongue to repeat her assurance that nothing was wrong, but there was no way he'd accept more half-hearted denials. She had to give him some kind of answer. Something to distract him. Something true, because he could tell when she was lying. Something believable, something that would upset her enough to have her imagination cladding her in a battle dress...

"What did Thor say to you?"

"What?" she squeaked. Her eyes felt big and round as silver dollars. "Thor? I... he didn't..."

_He suspects that I know something I shouldn't..._

"Jane..." to her ears, there was a warning in Loki's voice. He was close to her now, reaching out.

_Just s__ay something! Anything! _

"Thor..." she blurted out to forestall him, "he... he asked me to marry him."

Well, it wasn't a lie. Even so, she winced and looked away, already wishing as the words had risen off of her lips that she could snatch them back and hide them. Despite the many times Loki had consoled her after her fights with Thor, she had never mentioned this little detail to him. Using it now as misdirection seemed somehow despicable.

Despicable or not, the misdirection worked only too well. Loki's outstretched hand froze inches from her face, then fell back to his side as he rocked back on his heels like she'd dealt him a physical blow. She was distantly surprised to discover that he could somehow become paler than he already was. It had done the trick; she had successfully deceived the god of lies. But success felt like a pyrrhic victory if ever there was one; the look of pure, uncomplicated happiness that had shone from his eyes moments was gone as though it had never been.

Loki abruptly spun on his heel and paced away from her, ostensibly to examine the rose he had been painting once again. Her self-castigation redoubled as she risked looking up to find that he had gone perfectly, rigidly still, so still it was as though time had stopped in a little bubble around him. As though he didn't trust himself with even the slightest movement. His face was hidden from her, but his head was bowed slightly, and the tightness across his shoulders told her well enough that her words had hit him hard.

"I see... so he did... and you..." he cleared his throat loudly. "Well, then, of course I am mistaken. You can have no cause for unhappiness at all," he said, his voice laden with a quiet bitterness. "Indeed, you must be overjoyed." If he was trying to disguise his distress, he was failing miserably. He laughed abruptly, harshly, shaking his head. "The little Midgardian commoner and the golden Asgardian prince. Surely your people will write a new fairytale."

The allusion struck her like a slap to the face. Fairytales were for _here,_ in their dream; something that was just between them. They were sacrosanct. It hurt to hear them thrown back at her so casually. But she couldn't falter now. She latched onto the pain, letting it help her focus her feelings. The anger that bubbled up in its wake was refreshingly clarifying.

"I haven't actually said yes," she snapped, swiftly shuffling all her remaining disbelief and misgivings to the back of her mind and letting him draw her into the argument at hand. Her breathing had increased, but whether with anger or something else entirely, she wasn't entirely certain. She didn't seem to be able to tear her eyes away from him. "I _can't_ say yes."

Loki's head came up, and he turned toward her, his expression cautiously blank, though she saw a glimmer of defiant disbelief in the set of his jaw and the shine in his eyes.

"Why?" he said, sounding a little breathless himself. "What could possibly be stopping you?"

"I…" Jane began to blink a little too rapidly at the directness of the question. It wasn't like him, any more than the edge of raw vulnerability that had crept into his expression, and she didn't know quite what to do with it. He wasn't making this any easier. _When does he ever? _A small smile tried to tug at her mouth, despite her frustrations. Well now, _th__at _was more like the Loki she knew; difficult to the end, and all the more intriguing for it. "I... ahem... I'm..."

_I'm in love with you, you idiot. _

"I mean, I..."

_You mean more to me than he ever could. _

"I just..."

_I don't think I can live without you._

"I'm not sure I can trust him."

_Coward... _she silently accused herself.

Loki frowned, turning further towards her. "You think him unfaithful?" he wondered, clearly perplexed, as though the very idea defied imagination, even for him.

"Nothing like that," Jane gave a little shake of her head. It was her turn to turn away, pacing back towards the topiary and reaching out to toy idly with a dark, shiny leaf as she warmed to the subject at hand. Her failed relationship with Thor was much easier to face than the conflict of her desires and her doubts surrounding Loki. "There's something happening. Something to do with SHIELD. Some secret or danger… something big. I think it might even have something to do with the safety of Earth." Jane's hand stilled on the leaf, staring at it without really seeing it. "Thor won't tell me anything," she said quietly. "He's lying to me, dismissing me… _stealing _from me. All to maintain this fiction that everything is fine, when it's obvious that something is wrong. How can I trust him, when he won't trust me?"

Loki remained utterly still behind her. The silence began to unnerve her, her fingers fidgeting on the leaf until it came loose in her hand. She huffed out a nervous little laugh at her own inadequacy with words.

"Doesn't matter," she muttered. "I'll find the truth on my own. I just wish…" she shook her head.

"Perhaps he has good reason," Loki said, startling her. She abandoned the hedge and turned to stare at him in disbelief. He offered her a conciliatory smile, but his eyes remained serious. Troubled. "Perhaps he only wants to keep you safe."

Jane went on staring at him, stunned..

"I know he's trying to protect me," she finally said, more than mildly flabbergasted. "But that's not the point."

Loki took a hesitant step towards her, seeming only now to sense her displeasure with the turn in the conversation.

"Maybe not to you," Loki said seriously. "You may not value your own safety above your curiosity, Jane, but…" he faltered, choosing his words carefully. "If Thor thinks it too dangerous, then I think perhaps it is best that you not trouble yourself further over this matter."

Jane briefly wondered if this was a form of double speak, and he was really talking about himself, defending his own duplicitous behavior. But as he finished, realization struck, narrowing her eyes. The last of her nervous uncertainty melted away as her anger at Thor's high-handed behavior expanded abruptly to include the man in front of her.

There was no way Loki would ever go out of his way to agree with Thor unless…

_He knows something.  
_

"Not you too!" Jane hissed, venom in her voice.

Thor's words about his 'father' changing his mind, granting some request, most likely something to do with whatever was going on in the vicinity of Titan… Loki knew at least some part of what was going on. And he was going to keep her in the dark too!

"Jane," Loki said, a new note of tension entering his tone, "Hear me. You must not pursue this."

"I will if I want to!" she all but snarled, her anger finally breaking.

"Jane, please…"

"It's not as though you can stop me," she added snidely. "Seeing as how you're dead."

Loki's mouth snapped shut on whatever he'd been about to say and his eyes fell closed as though she'd shut the lid of a coffin on him. Jane cringed inwardly, her shoulders wilting. That had been a low, petty blow, even if she knew it wasn't true. She didn't want to lash out at him, hurt him, push him away. That was the very last thing she wanted. But she was so _tired _of being lied to for what others called "her own good". She squeezed her eyes shut against the burn of angry tears. She needed answers, not platitudes. She needed somewhere to place her faith.

Gritting her teeth, she whirled to storm away, striking viciously at the topiary as she stalked past it, as though punishing the shrubbery might fix anything. A moment later she hissed in pain to observe that the topiary had injured her back, a concealed thorn delivering a deep, painful cut across her hand. She stumbled to a halt beside the game table, cradling the wounded appendage and feeling enormously sorry for herself. She looked down to find a Snakes and Ladders board waiting there, benignly begging to be played, but for once the temptation to let games buffer this difficulty between them held no sway over her. Games should bring people together, not keep them apart.

Loki was suddenly behind her, close and quiet, but tangible as a physical weight, and despite her despondent ire Jane's breath caught in her chest to feel him so near at her back. He didn't say anything, just stood there, so close, and yet still too far away. Jane's lips parted in an inaudible sigh, bowing her head and swaying ever so slightly towards him, longing to lean into him and feel his touch.

"I'm tired of being treated like a princess in a tower," she whispered. "Someone to be kept sheltered and ignorant. I don't want that."

Loki's stepped closer, and she barely suppressed a shiver at the feel of his breath against her hair.

"When people try to protect you from danger it is because they… because they _care _for you," he said, his voice low and near, and this time she did shiver, just a little, her heartbeat speeding. "It's no reason to deny yourself the happiness within your reach. You should…" she heard him swallow hard, "…you should marry the man that you love."

Jane's chest constricted so painfully that her next breath almost insurmountably difficult to draw. The cynical smile that stretched her face was painful as well.

"I don't think I'll ever marry…" she murmured, fighting tears.

A hand, strong and warm and insistent, clamped around the wrist she held to her chest, drawing her roughly around, so that with a gasp she was suddenly looking up into Loki's face.

"Why?" he demanded hotly. His brow was furrowed with frustration and genuine confusion. And something else, as his eyes traced her face, something that echoed resentment, as though she was taunting him with something he craved, but which she'd left just out of his reach. His jaw clenched, and he gentled his touch, turning her hand over and breaking his gaze to look down at the little trickle of blood welling from the cut. "Why wouldn't you marry…?" he amended, affecting conversational disinterest.

Jane looked down at the cut as well, and when she answered, she knew it was the truth, even though she had never articulated it out loud before.

"My mother and father were like a fairytale. Perfectly matched, and so happy. But then my father died. And of course it wasn't his fault, but was still just a kid and I felt abandoned. If I couldn't trust him to stay, not for my mom, and not for me, then who could I trust? I stopped believing in 'happily ever after'. It's…" she smiled sadly. "It's just a pretty fantasy," she said, her voice choked. "Beautiful to dream of, but with no basis in reality. Why promise to be together forever, when there's no such thing?" Now she was the one who sounded agonizingly bitter. "You hope so much for happiness, and all you get for hoping is pain."

Loki meanwhile continued to gently clasp her hand, running his thumb along the line of her cut, examining it intently for a long, thoughtful moment.

"You're right about that, of course," he said at length. "Hope is like one of these roses. You reach for its beauty, only to be pricked by its thorns, and the tighter you hold to it, the deeper it cuts."

His other hand came up and he pressed two fingers over the wound. Jane tried to recoil at the stinging pain, but he held her firmly still.

"However," he went on, drawing his fingers down the length of the wound as they flickered with green light, "I have found that it isn't always necessary to be happy. Sometimes it is enough to have someone with whom you can share your pain." He moved his fingers away and Jane was amazed to see that the wound had healed, only a fine pale line remaining to prove it had been there at all. "And you know you have found the right one, when they can heal the wounds in your heart well enough that, perhaps to your surprise, you find that, even through the pain, you can feel something much like happiness once again…"

They looked up at the same moment, and Jane's breath hitched in her throat as their eyes met. Her hand remained clasped in his, and her whole world seemed to narrow, until it revolved around the feel of his fingers folding around hers. She felt like she was drowning in his nearness. And she only wanted to sink deeper. She flexed her fingers, grazing her thumb tentatively along his, and was rewarded with a sharply drawn breath and a fine tremor that may have come from either of them.

Loki stiffened abruptly and turned quickly away from her to critically survey a Snakes and Ladders board on the game table. His hand slipped lingeringly, perhaps even reluctantly from hers, and she was left standing alone and feeling bereft.

"I hope that you find that," he said, his voice painstakingly uninflected, distancing himself in more than just a physical way. Jane stared at his back for a long, bewildered moment. Then her eyes fluttered closed and she drew her healed hand back into her body, pressing it to her pounding heart and savoring the lingering warmth of his touch.

_Sometimes it is enough… _

She was suddenly incredibly tired of thinking about whether it was right or wrong to love this man, whether it was wisdom or insanity to consider being with him, or even what she should do about any of it. Each passing moment stitched her closer to him, wove him tighter into her being, so that she really wasn't sure she would ever be alright again if she lost him. She loved him. Real or a dream, right now all that mattered was that he was here with her. And for right now... yes, that was enough.

Drawing in a deep breath, against the bittersweet ache in her chest, she opened her eyes and cast her gaze about in search of some sort of break for the escalating tension. Her eyes fell on the Snakes and Ladders game.

"This game is from ancient India. It's supposed to teach the players about vice and virtue," she said, tracing one of the serpents carved into the ivory board with the tip of her finger. The scales were sharp. "Sit down," she invited, moving around the table and suiting word to action. "I'll show you how to play."

.

* * *

Jane won only the first game. After that, Loki beat her three times in a row before Jane figured out how he was cheating and conceded defeat.

"Clearly this has been a pointless exercise," she pointed out, trying to tease through the persistent blush that she could not seem to banish no matter how long she sat opposite him.

"What makes you say that?"

"The game can't teach you anything. You're obviously immune to virtue, and you already know all there is to know about vice."

"Oh, I don't know," he smirked, his eyes dancing with mischief and something else that made her heart flutter. "You can always learn something new."

On another day, she might have kept playing, might have tried to puzzle out a way to cheat the cheater and beat him at his own game. But her heart wasn't in it today. It was busy elsewhere, distracted with more intriguing games, like chasing his gaze away with her own when she would look up and find him watching her with dark, intent eyes. Or seeing how close she could inch her hand along the perimeter of the board towards him without seeming conspicuous, conscious of every inch between her fingers and his. The game they were playing wasn't the one on the board in front of them. Both of them seemed to know it, even though neither seemed able to overcome the sweet swell of tension to make a decisive move. Assailed as she was by an overwhelming awareness of him, it amazed her she made it through as many rounds as she had.

Once Jane had thrown up her hands and given up on Snakes and Ladders, they rose and by unspoken agreement drifted inevitably towards the hedge wall, and the red paint that waited there. Loki may be real, but the dream was still the dream, and the dream wanted the roses to be red.

So much so, apparently, that once there Jane discovered, to her surprise, that a number of the white roses were bleeding slowly to red all on their own.

"Curiouser and curiouser," she quoted quietly, her gaze arrested with fascination.

"They should be red…" Loki murmured, coming up close beside her, somehow overtly not touching her as he echoed her thoughts. "…they want to be red."

They were the same words Thor had heard Odin speak in the garden on Asgard. Jane shivered, a rush of pure excited energy rushing up her spine. _Real. _At times it still seemed surreal. But at moment like this, she wondered how she could ever have doubted it.

They stood so close, side by side, and watched, perplexed and helpless, as the crimson stain spread along the white petals, like a linen bandage blossoming over a fresh wound.

_Yes… they should be red… they want to be red…_

_...we want them to be red..._

And there was the essential truth of it. It was more than just desire or curiosity or infatuation. Every cell in her body had honed in on him, attuned to him, to his presence, his distance, every nuance of his position and action; she could feel herself revolving around him. There was no choice in this any longer. Denying this feeling was like denying herself air. If she kept it up, she felt like it really might kill her. The roses no longer needed to be painted. They were painting themselves. Whatever they had begun, it was out of their hands. The roses would be red, whether they painted them or not.

Loki's voice penetrated her revelation.

"Sing to me, Jane," he said quietly. He glanced sideways at her, found her watching him steadily. His expression was as serious as she'd ever seen it, but his eyes shone, dark and light at the same time, with both certainty and uncertainty. "Please…"

As so often happened when she was with him, she could tell that what she was hearing and what he was saying weren't quite the same thing. He was saying – and asking – so much more.

Jane's lips parted against the pain of her heart stuttering in her chest.

She wouldn't deny him. She knew the just the song she wanted to sing.

Recalling the words, she fixed her eyes on the roses, drawing courage from each spreading blush of crimson. Feeling light-headed with anticipation and terror, as though she were teetering on the brink of some dizzying drop, she gave voice to her own fervent wish.

"_There you see her, sitting there across the way. She don't got a lot to say, but there's something about her. And you don't know why but you're dying to try. You wanna kiss the girl…"_

In her peripheral vision, she saw him turn his head more fully towards her, his eyes journeying over her profile as though trying to take in every individual facet of her features all at once, memorizing her as she was in this moment. He seemed to hang on the words of the song, as though he longed to believe they were for him, but didn't quite dare. His scrutiny made her skin feel like it was made of light with the heat rising in her blood.

"_Yes, you want her. Look at her, you know you do. Possible she wants you too; there is one way to ask her."_

Jane was amazed that she neither melted nor burst into flames when she felt him reach up and trail the back of one finger reverently along the line of her jaw. She turned her face into his touch as his hand turned, his palm rising to cradle her cheek. Slowly, tentatively, she raised her eyes, letting them linger for a heartbeat on his parted lips, before traveling higher to find his.

"_It don't take a word, not a single word… Go on and kiss the girl…"_

His eyes begged her and warned her. Frightened of her fear and regret. Terrified that she would tempt him with heaven and then send him back to hell. But her own firestorm of anxiety had all but burned away, and she refused to go back as she shifted forward, encouraging him.

Still he hung back, arrested on the brink of a delirious fall down into the ocean of devotion and desire to which her siren song called him. Jane very nearly smiled in the face of his lingering indecision, infusing the next lines with a lilt of teasing.

"_Sha la la la la la, my oh my. Look like the boy too shy. Ain't gonna kiss the girl. Sha la la la la la, ain't that sad? Ain't it a shame? Too bad, he gonna miss the girl…" _

A feather light touch tracing her bottom lip stilled her singing. His eyes followed the pad of his thumb along the line of her mouth

"Jane…"

Jane sighed, leaning into his touch, yielding. He exhaled forcefully, as though she'd knocked the wind out of him with that gentle surrender. Her eyes fell closed as the last thread of resistance fell away from him, and he descended to bridge what little distance still separated them…

A shrill shriek cut through the dream like a sharp knife through wet tissue paper. Jane's eyes flew open in time to see an expression of confusion and frustrated loss cross Loki's features as she was torn bodily out of his grasp. Jane thought she reached for him, but she couldn't tell and he was gone before it could matter as the dream disintegrated around her.

.

* * *

Jane's eyes flew open, and she sat bolt upright in bed, searching wrathfully for the source of the intrusion, intent upon vengeance. She honed in on the obnoxious noise. Her cellphone was ringing.

She felt like screaming. Instead, she scowled and pressed the green button.

"Damn it, Darcy, this had better be important," she growled, flopping back down onto her pillow to stare up at the first pale rays of sunrise creeping across the ceiling. "I was having a really, _really _good dream…"

"Dude, you can finish your sex dream later!" Darcy snapped, uncharacteristically short. "Don't you know what's going on?"

Jane blinked, the fine hairs on the back of her neck standing on end at the urgency in her friend's tone.

"What do you mean?" she asked, sitting up more slowly this time. "What's happening?"

"Thor didn't tell you?" Darcy exclaimed. "Man, you weren't kidding about those communication issues…"

"Darcy, _what_ is going on?"

"Shit, I was hoping you knew something. It's Asgard, they're…" Darcy broke off at the sound of voices in the background. "…shit, shit shit! I have to go."

"Darcy!"

"Turn on the TV. Doesn't matter which channel. It's on all of them."

Without another word, she hung up. Jane stared at her phone in consternation for about five seconds. Then she clambered out of bed, throwing her bathrobe over her pajamas, and bolted for the living room. She switched on the TV.

Her jaw dropped.

It was just after midnight in New York, and the newscaster narrating over an unbelievable scene outside the Avengers Tower. Her heart leapt into her throat as she watched the scene that had left Darcy so agitated.

She probably should have felt some sort of compunction about contacting Thor after all that had happened between them in the past twenty-four hours, but the only thing that occurred to her as she snatched up her cell once more was that he had a lot of explaining to do.

_He knew… he had to have known…! _Anger surged in to replace any lingering trepidation. This was like Tromso all over again, and she was sick of feeling like a fool!

The phone rang twice before he picked up.

"Hello, Jane," Thor said from the other end. He sounded wary, and not a little resigned.

"Thor," Jane said a low, controlled tone through clenched teeth. "Why is there an army of Asgardian shock troops invading Manhattan through an open Bifrost beam?"

"It is hardly an army," Thor replied evenly. "Merely three squadrons of Einherjar warriors. And they are not invading, they are here by invitation."

"That's not what the news media is saying! Everyone's terrified! And that's not the point!"

"There is no need for alarm," Thor said with infuriating calm. "Asgard has never had any hostile intention towards Midgard. I would think that your people would believe that by now."

"No one knows what to believe!" Jane shot back. "Because no one will _tell _them anything!"

Thor sighed long-sufferingly. "Asgard's forces are amassing here in preparation to launch an orbital patrol. It is a… security measure. Nothing more."

"Really?" Jane seethed, bristling at his calm, ever-so-conciliatory tone. Her teeth ground together so tightly that it hurt, and she discovered abruptly that she was at the very end of her patience. Her temper sizzled and roiled and boiled over. "And this has _nothing_ at all to do with the anomalous energy readings around Titan?"

There was a long, satisfyingly shocked silence from the other end of the line.

"How did you…"

"Oh, please!" Jane snapped. "You really thought the best way to keep me from knowing something was to tell me I wasn't allowed to know about it? It's like you don't know me at all!"

"I begin to wonder…" Thor muttered.

"Thor. Explain," Jane ground out, pacing back and forth in front of the TV, her eyes glued to the set. "Now!"

Thor sighed again. "You recall I spoke of a request to my father? Well, this was the subject of my inquiry."

"You asked for soldiers?"

"Just so. Father refused to open Asgard to battle by leading troops to defend Midgard. Yet the very next day he had a change of heart."

_A change of heart. _Jane's restless pacing stilled and she closed her eyes, privately realizing that it was only after she had told Loki the story of the Beast's happy ending that he had agreed to send troops to defend her home.

"He agreed to send troops to Earth," Thor went in the wake of her silence, "but refused to lead them into battle himself. It deprives us of the might of Gungnir, which has the power bolster the strength and stamina of the Einherjar. But even without it, the might of Asgard's warriors and battle mages should be sufficient."

Her eyes flew open.

"Sufficient for _what_?" she demanded. "Defend Earth from _what_? I can't _stand_ this! You can't keep this from me any longer, Thor!"

"I can, and I must, and I will!" Thor shouted back, startling her. "At least until… Curse it all…" he growled. "Stay where you are Jane. I will be there as swiftly as I can fly."

"What?" Jane said, a spike of panic lancing through her. "No! I mean, you don't need to! You're… busy!"

"Oh Jane…" he gave a mirthless laugh, and Jane thought she has never before heard him sound so bitter as he threw her words back at her. "…you really think I would leave you unprotected now that you know of this threat? It's like you don't know me at all."

Jane scowled. "But… but why does just _knowing _put me in danger?" she asked, confounded and almost pleading with him now.

"I will explain more fully when I arrive," he told her.

"But Thor!"

He hung up before she could protest further.

Jane stared, open-mouthed, at the phone for a beat. Then she dropped it and bolted for the trap door in the closet. Thor was on his way, and she would _not _lose her lab to his agency-sanctioned kleptomania a second time.

Hitting the floor of the boiler room already running, she dashed to the patch in the electrical line, nearly upending the card table in her haste to disconnect the main circuit.

"Damn it, Thor," she huffed as she angrily stripped away the thin layer of rubber insulation. "Weeks and months of nothing but an odd weekend of takeout and TV movies, and now, _now, _you have to rush back to my side like some kind of white knight out to rescue a damsel in distress…" She growled as she painstakingly rushed to untwist the electrified lengths of copper with her insulated pliers, vocalizing the frustration she could not afford to allow to seep into her movements. "You know, our relationship might have lasted a lot longer if I hadn't had to create a functional wormhole to Saturn just to get your attention!"

As though in mimic of her fury, the copper wire repaid her abuse by zapping her as it came free, sending an agonizing jolt of numbness up her arm. Muttering obscenities under her breath, she stumbled back, ramming the card table again with her hip, sending a shower of mechanical components and one of the prototypes tumbling to the unforgiving concrete

"Damn it!" she snarled, flustered and feeling every tick of the clock. "What is this, bad karma?"

Crouching on the cold concrete, she was still gathering the pieces back up when the computer beeped loudly in the silence. Jane jumped so violently that she banged her head on the underside of the card table, sending more tools and components raining down around her. She shrieked more in frustration than pain.

"Definitely karma…" she panted, shoving the damaged prototype into the pocket of her robe as she climbed to her feet.

_I'm paying for that almost-kiss… _she thought, her harried expression going slightly wistful as she picked her way through the sharp bits of wire and metal in her bare feet to see what the computer was complaining about. She didn't dare let her self daydream about where their next shared dream might lead. Despite current difficulties, he very thought weakened her knees and left her tingling all over in anticipation. She bent over the computer and hit the space bar to wake up the monitor.

The screen blinked on. Arrayed in its center were the images sent by the probes that the computer had finished decrypting.

"What the…"

At first Jane didn't understand what she was looking at. Her mind didn't seem to want to process what the grainy black and white and throbbing thermal images were trying to show her. Most of it was little yellow dots sprinkled in the dark blue-black of the space around the greenish glow of the moon's surface, spaced in regular intervals, like a reverse leopard print. She clicked through the images, uncomprehending. What kind of…

Then her mouth fell open yet again as the pieces clicked into place, and then she realized what she was looking at.

"Holy mother of…"

Spaceships. Dozens, if not hundreds. A veritable armada in orbit above Titan.

The computer beeped again, and a file flashed in the lower corner of her screen. An audio file.

The probe had picked up a transmission. From the alien fleet.

Blinking rapidly, Jane bullied her thoughts into something vaguely resembling order. There wasn't time for this. First, she had to finish concealing this lab. A few keystrokes closed the external data backup system linked to her laptop, and she detached the connection and shoved the card table up against the wall into the shadows between the boilers. Folding her laptop closed and stuffing it into its case, she swung the strap over her shoulder and, ensuring that everything was fully powered down, shut off the light.

Back up in her apartment, she took the flashlight out of the closet, and shoved her box full of Disney movies in, covering the trap door.

When she finally sank down into the couch, she was breathing a little too hard, but it wasn't from exertion. Thor would be here any moment, and find her hovering over a laptop full of illicit data. Hopefully it would serve as an effective decoy. Thor could confiscate it, believing it to be her primary work station, never suspecting her true work was secreted down below.

But what if it didn't? What if he found everything, and she was left in the dark once again, knowing only enough to be terrified of everything she didn't know? What if this was her only chance to look at this data?

Her fingers felt curiously weak as she deposited the laptop on the coffee table and opened it. It beeped again as the screen woke up, the audio file lit up like a little beacon, drawing the eye, begging for attention. With baited breath, Jane clicked it.

A crackling hiss sputtered from the speakers, before it cleared and resolved into the harsh, guttural tones of an alien voice.

"…orders from the master. Ragkargk hragrarg. Move lead ships out. Sagak! First wave align. Graktak formation. Prepare to meet the Asgardian scum. For the sake for the Master of the Infinity Stones! For the glory of the great general! For the victory of Thanos!"

There was no time to think about what the words meant. The final word, that name, dissolved in another hissing wave, but not before it struck Jane's ear drums and resounded through her head like a gong.

Jane gasped, shooting to her feet, then whimpered and swayed as a wave of dizziness crested over her. _Thanos... _thinking the word was physically painful, but somehow she couldn't stop. _Thanos... _Thoughts swirled manically through her mind like her head was a snow globe someone had snatched up and vigorously shaken. No, more like... someone was rummaging through her mind, digging through her thoughts and shoving them aside... she couldn't think. The flat tilted and spun before her eyes.

_Thanos... Thanos... Thanos... _

Her vision bowed alarmingly, rocking drunkenly until her gaze fell on the red rose arching its face up towards her from its vase in the coffee table. It seemed to swell and stretch, straining towards her. She was about to reach for it, when the door to the balcony burst open and Thor crashed into the room, bigger than life, Mjolnir raised as though ready for a fight.

His eyes swept the room, and found her, in much the same way her eyes had found the rose.

"Jane!" he exclaimed, taking a step towards her. "What…"

"Thor…" Jane interrupted; her voice sounded curiously distant. "Who is… Thanos?"

There was a creaking, cracking sound from the silence somewhere behind her. Her ears popped painfully with an abrupt change in atmospheric pressure, and suddenly the flat was filled with a screaming gale of atmosphere being sucked away into a vacuum.

"Jane! No! NO!"

Jane felt her face go slack with shock, her eyes widen with confusion, her own words echoing in her mind as her mouth opened in a silent cry.

…_why does just _knowing _put me in danger…?_

The rose shivered in its vase, then flew free and vanished past her. The pull of the void seemed to wrap around her like claws, and moment later Jane was weightless, airborne. She reached out fruitlessly for Thor, only to watch him falling away from her at terrible speed, his outstretched hand closing on the empty air where she had just stood. The rip in reality folded in like great black wings, and the whole world went dark around her.

.

* * *

TBC

.

* * *

**A/n: **Uh-oh... so maybe Thor wasn't keeping Jane in the dark just to be a jerk after all... and just when things were starting to heat up too!

I'm far from satisfied with this chapter, but if I waited until I had it just right we'd all be old and grey. Sorry it took me so long to update. It is a tale of suspicion, jealousy, intrigue and betrayal most foul, but basically I find myself in the difficult position of working two full time jobs plus overtime; I'm currently working over 100 hours per week. Basically, free time has become a relic out of myth and legend in my world... but what little I can find, I am using to write!

So my stories WILL be updated; its just going to take a little longer for the time being. And for those waiting on updates on _The Serpent of Eden _ and _Legends from Beyond the Infinity Haze, _I swear on my monkey's favorite vodka bottle, I am still working on them, its just taking a lot longer than I would like. Please be patient, they will be updated just as soon as possible! Again so sorry, please bear with me, and thank you again to everyone who has stuck with the story so far!

Don't forget, reviews are muse food! Comments, questions and constructive criticism are always welcome!


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